CLEANMETALS PRESENTATION OF METALS CEMENTATION IN AN AGITATED FLUIDIZED BED - (COPPER EXAMPLE) 'One waste stream, copper for 3'600 Toyota Prius lost forever! Not acceptable!'

摘要

Cleanmetals has developed a versatile, reliable, highly efficient and easy to operate cementation reactor with no moving parts allowing for direct and financially viable production of metals from low grade and/or low volume Pregnant Leach Solution ("PLS"). The reactor operates at 25m3/h. The lowest concentration being put through our reactor was 0.45g/l and the highest was 20g/l. In all cases a minimum of 95% extraction rate was achieved in one passage through the reactor. Each g/l produces 17t of copper per month. The PLS goes into the reactor from the bottom, flows through the reactor and an agitated fluidized bed of iron shots and exits at the top whereby it is fed into a magnetic filter removing the residual iron and through a filter press recovering the copper cement. The role of the specific agitation is to regenerate the surface of the iron shots used as a sacrificial metal, thus allowing for the contact area between the iron and the PLS to always be optimal. Selectivity between some metals can be achieved by modifying operational parameters. As an example, a client was cementing 65% of the arsenic (As) content in his copper PLS producing a noxious cement with salability and value implications. We managed to reduce the As content by a factor of 20 (not noxious) while increasing the extraction rate by 18% thus adding in excess of 108t of copper cement per annum. This extra recovery represents the copper need for 3'600 Toyota Prius. The goal of our reactor is to offer the metallurgical and mining industry a technico-economic solution to process any kind of secondary streams and gain value from the contained metals in only one process, thus reducing the amount of metal disposed of and the environmental impact of our industry.This paper outlines what type of various solutions Cleanmetals has treated with the attached performance and results of such production or pilot campaigns.