Leaching of bornite in acidified ferric chloride solutions

Intermediates Transformation of Bornite Bioleaching by Leptospirillum ferriphilum and Acidithiobacillus caldus

“…First, non-stoichiometric bornite was formed and second converted into chalcopyrite and elemental sulfur. Pesic [4] also had the same conclusion that the dissolution of bornite was divided into two steps during bornite leaching by acidic FeCl 3 . They suggested that the first step reaction was an electrochemical reaction controlled by a mixing kinetics process.…”

“…L. ferriphilum mainly plays the role of oxidizing Fe 2+ and producing Fe 3+ during the leaching process. The Fe 3+ as an efficient oxidant accelerates the leaching process of the bornite, as shown in the following equation [4,13].…”

“…Bornite is also an important source of copper, following chalcopyrite and chalcocite in the list of copper resources [4]. Some researchers have studied the traditional hydrometallurgical process of bornite.…”

Synergetic effect of pyrite on strengthening bornite bioleaching by Leptospirillum ferriphilum

“…Bioleaching, as a simple, lower cost and eco-friendly technology has been widely used in leaching low grade copper and complex ores (Brierley and Brierley, 2001;Debaraj et al, 2005;Rawlings and Johnson, 2007), but most studies focused on chalcopyrite and few reports about bornite bioleaching have been published (Bevilaqua et al, 2003;FelĂcio et al, 2007;Wang et al, 2008). Bornite is an important source of copper (Bevilaqua et al, 2003;Ferraz et al, 2011), following chalcopyrite and chalcocite in economic importance (Pesic and Olson, 1983), so the development of bornite processing can bring huge economic benefits. Bornite always occurs with other metal sulfides in native deposit (Buckley et al, 1984;Mathur et al, 2005;Pesic and Olson, 1983), so it is a prospective and valuable topic to study their interaction during metallurgy and mineral processing.…”

“…Bornite is an important source of copper (Bevilaqua et al, 2003;Ferraz et al, 2011), following chalcopyrite and chalcocite in economic importance (Pesic and Olson, 1983), so the development of bornite processing can bring huge economic benefits. Bornite always occurs with other metal sulfides in native deposit (Buckley et al, 1984;Mathur et al, 2005;Pesic and Olson, 1983), so it is a prospective and valuable topic to study their interaction during metallurgy and mineral processing. Some researchers (Cruz et al, 2005;Mehta and Murr, 1983;Payant et al, 2012) have concluded that galvanic interactions between different sulfide ores could change their dissolution behavior.…”