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US 10,947,606 B2Granted
Heap leaching method
AssigneeBhp Billiton Olympic Dam Corporation Pty Ltd
InventorGary Vernon Rorke
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for recovering one or more of copper, uranium and a precious metal from an ore material, including: (a) forming a heap of the ore material; (b) during active heap irrigation, contacting the heap of the ore material with an iron containing acidic leach liquor having a high chloride content in the presence of an oxygen containing gas, and producing a pregnant leach solution; and (c) recovering one or more of copper, uranium and a precious metal from the pregnant leach solution.
Claims22
A method for recovering one or more of copper, uranium and a precious metal from an ore material, including:
- (a) forming a heap of the ore material;
- (b) during active heap irrigation under forced aeration, contacting the heap of the ore material with an iron containing acidic leach liquor having a high chloride content of a minimum of 15 g/L in the presence of an oxygen containing gas, and producing a pregnant leach solution;
- and
- (c) recovering one or more of copper, uranium and a precious metal from the pregnant leach solution;
- wherein, prior to contacting the ore with the acidic leach liquor in step (b), the method includes the steps of:
- i. treating the ore with a pre-leach solution having a chloride content up to 50 g/L and being relatively low as compared with the acidic leach liquor having a high chloride content of step (b), in order to dissolve at least some of the uranium and gangue minerals in the ore and produce a leachate, and to deplete deleterious elements in the ore that are available to form salt precipitates;
- and
- ii. treating the leachate to recover uranium and remove the deleterious elements.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.