Separation of copper and molybdenum sulfides from pyrite using a sea water/desalinated water hybrid process

A copper/molybdenum processing system comprising

• a roughing circuit and
• a cleaning circuit, wherein the roughing circuit comprises a sulfide separation stage arranged to receive a slurry comprising a ground ore product and sea water, the ground ore product comprising copper sulfide minerals and molybdenum sulfide minerals, wherein the cleaning circuit comprises a copper/molybdenum separation stage arranged to receive a bulk sulfide concentrate mixed with desalinated water, the bulk sulfide concentrate comprising the copper minerals and the molybdenum minerals recovered in the roughing circuit, wherein the ground ore product also comprises unwanted materials, and wherein the roughing circuit further comprises a comminution stage for comminuting an ore material and the sea water and to form the ground ore product in the slurry, and the sulfide separation stage separates a processed slurry containing said bulk sulfide concentrate which is sent to the cleaning circuit and separately discharges at least part of the unwanted materials as a gangue fraction, and wherein the cleaning circuit further comprises a regrinding stage arranged to receive the processed slurry, the processed slurry comprising the copper sulfide minerals and the molybdenum sulfide minerals recovered in the roughing circuit, the regrinding stage grinds the processed slurry to form a reground ore product containing said copper and molybdenum minerals which are sent to a cleaner flotation stage, the reground ore product comprising high pyrite tails and the bulk sulfide concentrate, the cleaner flotation stage separates the high pyrite tails as a separate fraction from a bulk mineral concentrate comprising said copper and molybdenum minerals, a bulk concentrate thickener which receives the bulk mineral concentrate forms a conditioned pulp containing the thickened bulk concentrate, a line connecting the conditioned pulp to the copper/molybdenum separation stage, and a source of engineered media functionalized to be hydrophobic comprises hydrophobic engineered media, and wherein the conditioned pulp contains hydrophobic molybdenum minerals and hydrophilic copper minerals that is conditioned with sodium hydrosulfide, and the copper/molybdenum separation stage comprises
• a slurry/media mixture stage which receives the conditioned pulp together with the hydrophobic engineered media loaded with the hydrophobic molybdenum minerals, and forms a slurry/media mixture;
• and
• a slurry/media separation stage which receives the slurry/media mixture, and separates a slurry product having a copper concentrate from the hydrophobic engineered media loaded with the hydrophobic molybdenum minerals, wherein the slurry/media separation stage comprises a media recovery stage, the media recovery stage comprises a vibrating screen, rotating trommel, or other separation device, for filtering, separating and directing a copper concentrate to a copper concentrate filtration stage from a hydrophobic media product comprising the hydrophobic engineered media loaded with hydrophobic molybdenum minerals and residual hydrophobic particles which are sent to a media wash stage, wherein the media wash stage washes the hydrophobic engineered media containing the hydrophobic minerals with a wash solution to remove the residual hydrophobic particles from the engineered media and molybdenum minerals and directs the washed hydrophobic engineered media with the molybdenum minerals to a media stripping stage, and a recycle line to recycle the wash solution returns the wash solution, containing the residual hydrophilic particles, to the bulk concentrate thickener stage.