Silver-catalyzed bioleaching for raw low-grade copper sulphide ores

Abstract

This research was conducted to investigate the biooxidation and copper dissolution from raw low-grade refractory copper sulphide ores located in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China using adapted Thiobacillus ferrooxidans bacteria. In order to accelerate the bioleaching rate, the adapted mixed bacteria and silver ion catalyst were tested in the leach columns at laboratory scale. The overall acid consumption was 4.3 kg sulphuric acid per kg of dissolved copper and was linearly related to the percent copper dissolution. The calculated copper dissolution rates obey the Shrinking Core Model. The relative activation energy of the whole biooxidative leaching stages was calculated to be 48.58 kJ/mol.

Keywords

green process / biohydrometallurgy / bioleaching / reaction kinetics / sulphide ores

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Acknowledgements

Financial contributions from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 20776019 and 40573044), the “A Hundred Talents Program” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 0560051057), the Key Program of Department of Education of Sichuan Government (No. 2004A146) and the Applied Basic Research Program of Sichuan Government (Nos. 05JY029-089-1, 05JY029-089-2) are acknowledged. Thanks also to the Editor and the anonymous reviewers for their active comments on the manuscript.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg