Selective leaching of penalty elements from copper concentrates: a review

Abstract Custom copper smelters impose substantial financial penalties for the presence of deleterious impurity elements in copper concentrates and can outright reject concentrates which contain impurity elements in concentrations that exceed specified values. Hence, there is strong motivation to remove penalised impurity elements from copper concentrates at the mine site before shipping to custom smelters. A number of leach systems have been developed for the selective extraction of penalty elements from copper concentrates, including: alkaline sulphide leaching (ASL); hypochlorite leaching; dilute sulphuric acid leaching with aluminium sulphate; and combined pressure oxidation (POX) leaching with copper precipitation leaching. This paper reviews these four systems with emphasis on the leaching behaviour of penalty elements. ASL has previously been employed in industry for the selective extraction of As and Sb from tetrahedrite-rich copper concentrates. Sodium sulphide solution leaches As, Sb, and Hg from a large range of minerals, however, does not leach arsenopyrite, a mineral which often contains a significant portion of the total As in copper concentrates. Hypochlorite leaching extracts As associated with enargite minerals. This leach system benefits from superior rates of As extraction when compared with ASL, and for this reason, has gained recent interest within the research community. Two major issues have been identified with hypochlorite leaching of copper concentrates. These are poor reagent selectivity towards As-bearing minerals and high levels of hypochlorite consumption. Unless these two issues are resolved it is unlikely that hypochlorite leaching will be employed in commercial processes. Dilute sulphuric acid leaching with aluminium sulphate is used to extract F associated with fluorite. This leach system also extracts F associated with apatite and chlorite. Laboratory-scale experiments and extensive operating experience have indicated that fluorite can be substantially leached from copper concentrates without addition of aluminium sulphate provided that the concentration of sulphuric acid in the leach solution is sufficiently high (at least 40 g L −1 ). POX/copper precipitation leach systems have potential to extract a large number of penalty elements from copper sulphide concentrates while simultaneously upgrading the concentration of copper in the concentrate. Two patented POX/copper precipitation leach processes have been specifically developed for the deportment of penalty elements. These two processes are reviewed in detail.