Integrated pressure oxidative leach of copper sulphidic feed with copper heap leach

A process for recovering copper from a sulphidic feed containing iron, arsenic, and copper, comprising:

• a) pressure oxidizing an aqueous feed slurry of the sulphidic feed in a pressure vessel to form a liquid phase containing free sulphuric acid and aqueous copper sulphate, and to precipitate arsenic as solid iron arsenic compounds, while maintaining a temperature in the pressure vessel above 200° C.;
• b) withdrawing from the pressure vessel treated slurry comprising the liquid phase containing sulphuric acid and copper sulphate, and solids containing the iron arsenic compounds;
• c) separating the liquid phase from the solids in a liquid solid separating step;
• d) recovering copper from the separated liquid phase and generating a solution enriched in acid and depleted in copper;
• e) neutralizing at least a portion of the solution from step d) in a copper heap leach to produce a pregnant leach solution (PLS) containing copper and reduced in acid;
• f) neutralizing at least a portion of the PLS from the copper heap leach to produce a solution further reduced in acid, and solids containing copper precipitates, and separating the solution from the solids;
• g) recycling the solution further reduced in acid from step f) as a process solution for step a);
• h) recycling the separated solids from step f) by combining with either the treated slurry from step b) or the separated liquid phase from step c) to re-dissolve copper and other metal values;
• and
• i) separating the solids from step h) either combined with the treated slurry in the separating step c) or combined with the separated liquid phase from step c) in a further liquid solid separating step, and feeding the separated liquid phase from the separating step c) or from the further liquid solid separating step to the copper recovery of step d).