RIVS Group, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

A. Ya. Boduen, Director of the Hydrometallurgical Department, Candidate of Engineering, Sciences, a_boduen@rivs.ru

The base of the modern copper production is the pyrometallurgical technologies aimed at obtaining rich concentrates. However, the global trends demonstrate a steady decrease in the quality of raw materials, which entails infeasibility of producing high-quality concentrates from some types of ore without heavy losses of valuable components. One of the ways of dealing with the problems connected with processing of low-grade and low-quality raw materials is the intelligent combination of the concentrating, pyro- and hydrometallurgical operations which can make a framework for the ecologically and economically efficient technologies for the high-level processing of raw materials with the incremental marketable production. The aim of this study is to examine efficiency of the hydrometallurgical technologies in conditioning of low-grade copper–pyrite concentrates and in processing of low-quality copper concentrates produced in treatment of low-grade and complex ore of cupriferous sandstone. In case of the low-grade pyritic concentrates, the study focused on the potential of their autoclaving to increase their grade up to the state standard GOST R 52998–2008 with by-production of zinc-bearing solution meant for extraction of zinc as an additional marketable product. For the second-category concentrates, the parameters of autoclave ammonia leaching are determined to be such that to selectively transfer 97 % of copper and 91.5 % of silver to solution in a single process step, without iron and rock-forming minerals. The base stages of a process flowsheet are developed for the bulk processing of low-quality copper concentrates.

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