A New Process of Leaching Copper and Cobalt from Copper Cobalt Oxide Ore in DR Congo

Abstract

This is an article in the field of metallurgical engineering. A copper cobalt ore Congo is an oxide ore with Cu 3.43% and Co 0.42% respectively. In this paper, the five stage cycle leaching process of leaching solution was used for the copper and cobalt leaching. The optimum conditions were as follows: the amount of sulfuric acid was 7.4% of the ore mass, the amount of sodium sulfite was 1.68 times of the theoretical amount, the grinding particle size of -74 μm accounts for 75%, leaching temperature was 45 ℃, the single-stage leaching time was 4 hours, and the liquid-solid volume mass ratio was between 2/1 and 3/1, the results showed that the leaching rate of copper and cobalt were 96.85% and 95.67% respectively. According to this leaching process, the amount of sulfuric acid was reduced by 6 kg/t compared with the primary leaching, and the total solution amount in the leaching process was reduced by about 1/4, which made the amount of subsequent cobalt precipitation and copper extraction solution was reduced.

Keywords

• metallurgical engineering
• copper-cobalt oxide ore
• cpper
• cobalt
• sodium sulfite + sulfite
• countercurrent leaching