Institute of Mining, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Khabarovsk, Russia

A. G. Sekisov, Deputy Director, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, sekisovag@mail.ru
A. V. Rasskazova, Leading Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences
T. G. Konareva, Senior Researcher

The source of mineral resources for the nonferrous metallurgy in the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia is the large deposits of porphyry–copper and cupriferous sandstone ores with associate noble metals. The resources of high-value metals are huge but concentrate mostly in crude and low-grade refractory ores, which conditions the use of a special leaching flowsheet. A cardinally new stage in the proposed flowsheet is the intensive oxidation pretreatment of ore in solution of sulfuric or nitric acids activated by means of electrophotochemical processing. Leaching runs in the pulse-and-static regime in the aсtive chloride/hypochlorite solution in alteration with oxidation of ore by spraying by sulfuric acid solution. On the whole, the proposed heap leaching flowsheet at industrial scale ensures technical-and-economic indexes comparable with the conventional processing with ore concentration and further recovery of high-value metals from the produced concentrates. Heap leaching of primary and complex copper ore is to be carried out after pretreatment by oxidation in activated solutions by means of soaking and spraying of ore using solutions containing oxidizers and complexing agents.

Permeability of mineral materials was determined with automated filtering device TG 1.3.8 in the Shared Center for Mineral Raw Material Research at the Khabarovsk Federal Research Center of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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