HYDROMETALLURGICAL PROCESS FOR THE TREATMENT OF COPPER-BEARING ORE

摘要

A hydrometallurgical process for recovering copperfrom copper bearing ores or fractions, by a process offirst wetting and sulfatizing the ore with controlledamounts of H2SO4 and water, followed by acid curing andrepulping to sulfatize a substantial portion of thecopper in the ore. Also, the fine and coarse fractionscan be classified, followed by pile leaching the coarsefraction, preferably reusing the cycled H2SO4 solutionobtained during the copper recovery process. Since thecoarse fraction is classified from the fine fraction, thepile leaching process is performed at very high specificflows, which substantially reduces the leaching period ascompared with that of conventional pile leaching.