Anticipating the new paradigm: Fundamental and applied studies on the catalytic heap leaching of low-grade primary copper sulfides

在过去的六年里，不列颠哥伦比亚大学和Jetti Resources开发了一种催化堆生物浸出技术，用于从低品位的原生硫化铜矿中回收铜。该技术涉及使用微量的带有硫代羰基官能团的有机添加剂来脱除铜的钝化并加快从黄铜矿中回收铜的速度，黄铜矿是最丰富和重要的铜矿石矿物。这是目前唯一可行的经济处理这些低品位矿石的技术。该技术已在工业上得到验证，被称为近40年来铜提取技术中最重要的创新。这项催化技术可能被证明是铜矿业数十年来从低品位原生硫化物资源中提取铜的“圣杯”。因此，它可以构成整个铜行业的新范式。最近，已经发现了几种添加剂，可以将铜的回收率提高到基本的UBC-Jetti技术的三倍或更多。在这个项目中，我们打算系统地研究这些添加剂对UBC-Jetti技术性能的影响。此外，我们还建议扩展我们在黄铜矿电化学方面的被广泛引用的工作，以研究催化剂和各种添加剂对从黄铜矿中浸出铜的潜在机理。最后，我们建议对不同催化剂和添加剂存在下的浸出动力学进行仔细的研究，并将结果纳入申请人开发的堆生物浸出过程的综合数学模型HeapSim2D中。

Over the last six years, the University of British Columbia and Jetti Resources have developed a catalytic heap bioleaching technology for the recovery of copper from low-grade primary copper sulfide ores. The technology involves using miniscule quantities of organic additives with thiocarbonyl functional groups to depassivate and accelerate the rate of copper recovery from chalcopyrite, the most abundant and important copper ore mineral. This is currently the only viable technology for treating these low-grade ores economically. The technology has been demonstrated commercially, and has been called the most important innovation in copper extraction technology in the last 40 years.This catalytic technology could prove to be the "holy grail" sought for decades by the copper mining industry for the extraction of copper from low-grade primary sulfide resources. As such, it could constitute the new paradigm for the entire copper industry.Recently, several additives have been discovered which could increase the rate of copper recovery by a factor of three or more over the basic UBC-Jetti technology. In this project, we propose to make a systematic study of the efficacy of these additives on the performance of the UBC-Jetti technology. Also, we propose to extend our highly cited work on chalcopyrite electrochemistry to study the underlying mechanisms of the catalysts and various additives on copper leaching from chalcopyrite. Finally, we propose to conduct a careful study of leaching kinetics in the presence of various catalysts and additives, and to incorporate the results into a comprehensive mathematical model of the heap bioleaching process, HeapSim2D, which has been developed by the applicant.