Project Status: Complete.
Further work carried out under the 2D9 project.
Project Participants: ANSTO, CSIRO, University of Queensland, Hatch
Project Leader: Warren Bruckard (CSIRO)
This project was aimed at developing and demonstrating novel flowsheets to remove, and store in an environmentally acceptable way, minor and toxic elements from the processing of sulfide base metal ores. The minor and toxic elements are currently deported to various streams (e.g. flotation concentrates, tailings, mattes, metals, fumes, dusts, etc.) across the unit operations in the flowsheet and are thus widely dispersed into the biosphere. Growing demand for base metals, declining availability of high grade/low minor element ores and stricter environmental requirements, all provide a strong business and sustainability imperative to investigate alternative ways to handle the minor and toxic elements.
In this project a new flowsheet was developed and tested for dealing with minor and toxic elements in the processing of base metal sulfides. The flowsheet is based on early removal of the minor and toxic elements in the flotation stage. This produces a base metal concentrate that can go to smelting, as per current flowsheets. The potential impact of this breakthrough technology not only addresses minor element issues in regard to current bas metal sulfide processing operations but will allow the development of presently unattractive/economic deposits to proceed.
Experimental and reporting work from Year 1 concluded in February 2008. Good progress was made in each of the areas of flotation, roasting, stabilisation and techno-economic analysis – the comparison of the early removal flowsheet against the conventional flowsheet was positive. A revised proposal for Year 2 was developed and submitted to CSRP for approval, along with a short scope of work focussing on investigating the effects of collector type on copper/arsenic separation. An AMIRA P970 proposal was developed and circulated to industry, with significant interest received to date – likely commencement in late 2008.