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In any copper smelter large quantities of copper slag are discarded as waste material causing space and environmental problems. This discarded slag contains important amounts of metallic values such as copper and iron. The recovery of copper values from an Indian smelter slag that contains 1.53% Cu, 39.8% Fe and 34.65% SiO(2) was the focus of the present study. A complete investigation of the different phases present in the slag has been carried out by means of optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. It is observed that iron and silica are mostly associated with the fayalite phase whereas copper is present in both oxide and sulfide phases. These oxide and sulfide phases of copper are mostly present within the slag phase and to some extent the slag is also embedded inside the oxide and sulfide phases. The recovery of copper values from the discarded slag has been explored by applying a flotation technique using conventional sodium isopropyl xanthate (SIX) as the collector. The effects of flotation parameters such as pH and collector concentration are investigated. Under optimum flotation conditions, it is possible to achieve 21% Cu with more than 80% recovery.

To identify and establish beneficiation techniques for banded hematite quartzite (BHQ) iron ore, a comprehensive research on BHQ ore treatment was carried out. The BHQ ore was assayed as 38.9wt% Fe, 42.5wt% SiO 2 , and 1.0wt% Al 2 O 3 . In this ore, hematite and quartz are present as the major mineral phases where goethite, martite, and magnetite are present in small amounts. The liberation of hematite particles can be enhanced to about 82% by reducing the particle size to below 63 μm. The rejection of silica particles can be obtained by magnetic and flotation separation techniques. Overall, the BHQ ore can be enriched to 65.3wt% Fe at 61.9% iron recovery. A flowsheet has been suggested for the commercial exploitation of the BHQ ore.

The study reports the effect of increasing pulp density on the bio-catalyzed leaching of metals from waste mobile phone printed circuit boards. Mixed microbial consortia of iron and sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms were used for batch bioleaching at varying pulp density of 7%, 10% and 15% (w/v). The copper content in the feed material was 26.3% (w/w) and the prime focus was to recover maximum copper along with other minor metals, such as zinc, aluminum, and nickel. All the bioleaching experiments resulted with 98–99% of copper recovery together with reasonable extraction Zn, Al, and Ni. The optimum copper recovery from bioleaching experiments demonstrates the possibility of scaling up with high pulp density, which could be economical as well as eco-friendly.

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