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The recovery of oxide copper minerals from a complex copper ore by

sulphidisation

Article  in  Minerals Engineering · March 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.mineng.2016.11.011

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 Minerals Engineering 102 (2017) 15–17

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

Short communication

The recovery of oxide copper minerals from a complex copper ore by

sulphidisation
K.C. Corin a,⇑, M. Kalichini a,c, C.T. O‘Connor a, S. Simukanga b
a
Center for Minerals Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
b
School of Mines, University of Zambia, Great East Road, Lusaka, Zambia
c
First Quantum Minerals Ltd., Kansanshi Mine, Solwezi, Zambia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Kansanshi copper mine is situated in the north western province of Zambia. As a result of the mineral
Received 10 May 2016 variations, the processing plant treats three distinct ore types, viz. oxide, sulphide and mixed. The objec-
Revised 7 November 2016 tive of this study was to investigate the floatability of a complex Kansanshi mixed copper ore with a spe-
Accepted 27 November 2016
cial focus on the sulphidisation process. Controlled potential sulphidisation (CPS) is preferred over slug
sulphidisation as the industry standard for the flotation of oxide copper minerals. Two potential ranges
were investigated in this study; 300 to 400 mV and 400 to 500 mV. Optimum flotation perfor-
Keywords:
mance was observed in the potential range of 300 to 400 mV and a NaHS:SIBX ratio of 7:1 during
Sulphidisation
Copper oxide minerals
CPS. An economic analysis of the results showed that CPS did not change the recoveries compared to slug
Flotation addition but required much lower dosages of NaHS.
Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 2. Experimental methods

Kansanshi copper mine is situated in the north western pro- A high grade mixed ore assaying at 1.17% Cu, was obtained by
vince of Zambia. The ore deposit contains both primary and sec- belt-cut at Kansanshi. Sodium isobutyl xanthate (SIBX) was the
ondary copper minerals and is therefore classed into three collector and the frother was DOW200. A 10% (w/v) stock solution
distinct types, viz. sulphide, oxide and mixed. The mixed ore con- of sulphidising agent, NaHS, was prepared as required for each test.
tains oxide, supergene oxide and hypogene sulphide copper spe- An Eriez MagneticsÒ MASCLAB belt driven stainless steel labo-
cies respectively with the greater part of the deposit being made ratory scale rod mill, charged with stainless steel rods, was used
up of sulphide and mixed ores. The oxide ore has a much higher for all milling in the test work. All flotation tests were carried
grade than the mixed and sulphide ores but contributes less to out in triplicate in a 3 L Barker flotation cell following the standard
the resource (Broughton et al., 2002). UCT setup. The pulp temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO) con-
The preferred method for the flotation of oxide and mixed cop- tent and Redox potential (vs SHE) (Eh) was measured for all tests
per ores is sulphidisation. The reagents are typically sodium sul- The ore was ground to 80% passing 150 lm. Sulphide mineral
phide (Na2S) and sodium hydrosulphide (NaHS). Slug recovery was done over 10 min and four concentrates collected
sulphidisation, which uses a single slug dose, is generally not pre- (Table 1).
ferred because the difficulty in controlling the pulp potential leads In general the flotation tests were conducted as per Table 1,
to poor mineral recoveries from either under-sulphidising or which displays the procedure for Slug sulphidisation. The xanthate
depression of minerals due to over-sulphidising. Controlled poten- only tests excluded the addition of NaHS in step 6.
tial sulphidisation (CPS) has been applied in numerous operations In the case of CPS, the same initial procedure as shown in Table 1
around the world e.g. Zambia (Chabuka and Witika, 2001), the was followed but following the collection of concentrate 2, three
Democratic Republic of Congo (Ferron and Manu, 1994) and China controlled sulphidisation dosage stages were added to the flotation
(Wenbin, 1993). procedure, and each dose was followed by the collection of the
concentrate. Two potential ranges were investigated. The NaHS
dosage was determined by the targeted potential range, viz. either
300 to 400 mV or 400 to 500 mV. This resulted in the total
⇑ Corresponding author. amount of NaHS required throughout the CPS tests being 219 g/t
E-mail address: kirsten.corin@uct.ac.za (K.C. Corin).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2016.11.011
0892-6875/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
16 K.C. Corin et al. / Minerals Engineering 102 (2017) 15–17

Table 1
Batch flotation procedure incorporating the recovery of both sulphide and oxide minerals using Slug sulphidisation.

Stage Conditioning Flotation SIBX Dow 200 NaHS

min min g/t g/t g/t
1. Grinding 3.3
2. Conditioning SIBX 1 30
3. Conditioning Frother 1 30
4. Concentrate 1 2
5. Concentrate 2 2
6. NaHS addition 250 or 500
7. Conditioning SIBX 2 25 or 30
8. Concentrate 3 3
9. Concentrate 4 3

and 397 g/t respectively. The conditioning time following each technique led to increased solids and water recovery. The higher
NaHS addition was 3 min. Three NaHS:SIBX ratios were investi- water recovery is indicative of the NaHS increasing froth stability.
gated within each sulphidisation stage, viz. 20:1, 10:1 and 7:1. For the slug sulphidisation procedure, increasing the NaHS dosage
SIBX was added and conditioned following each NaHS addition. from 250 g/t to 500 g/t led to a 41% increase in water recovery (viz.
from 237 g to 333 g) with a negligible increase in solids recovery
(31.13 g to 31.52 g). Using the CPS procedure resulted in an even
3. Results greater increase in water recovery compared to both the absence
of any NaHS or to the use of slug addition. The solids recovered
The ore contained both sulphide and oxide copper minerals. The after CPS were almost twice that recovered in the case of using
two most abundant copper minerals were chrysocolla (3.8 wt%) only SIBX and greater than in the case of slug addition. It is impor-
and chalcopyrite (1.0 wt%). The major gangue minerals in the ore tant to note that, in the case of CPS, when adding NaHS to control
were calcite (29.1 wt%), plagioclase-feldspar (23.8 wt%) and quartz the potential to the range of 300 to 400 mV the total NaHS
(16.4 wt%). According to the copper deportment in the ore; 63.1% added was 219 g/t but in the case of the higher potential range
of the copper reported as chrysocolla, 22.2% as chalcopyrite, 1.5% of 400 to 500 mV it was 397 g/t. It should be noted that a 5th
as cuprite and 2.9% as malachite/azurite. The focus of the study concentrate was included in these tests, which may induce higher
was therefore on chalcopyrite and chrysocolla because they were solids and water recoveries
the two most abundant copper minerals. The increase in solids recovery after the introduction of NaHS,
The liberation of chalcopyrite and chrysocolla were determined whether by slug sulphidisation or CPS, can be partially attributed
using QEMSCAN. About 29.8% of the chrysocolla and 51.5% of the to the recovery of oxide minerals which were not recovered during
chalcopyrite were fully liberated. Association data indicated that flotation with SIBX only. The grade-recovery results are sum-
the chalcopyrite was mostly associated with chrysocolla, viz. marised in Fig. 2. In the case of slug sulphidisation, Cu recovery
42.9% of the chalcopyrite was associated with chrysocolla and increased with increasing NaHS addition. The same observation
3.9% with malachite. Most of the chrysocolla was associated with has been made in slug sulphidisation of oxidised lead-zinc-silver
limonite, viz. 39.4%. 1.26% of the chrysocolla was associated with material with Na2S (Jones and Woodcock, 1979) and malachite
malachite and 4.0% with chalcopyrite. with calcium polysulphide (Quast et al., 2005). CPS addition of
Initial tests were conducted to optimise chalcopyrite and sec- NaHS also increased Cu recovery, when compared to the base case
ondary copper sulphide mineral recovery using only SIBX and this (30 g/t SIBX) Clearly NaHS plays a role in enhancing the recovery of
showed that a dosage of 30 g/t SIBX gave the highest Cu recovery the oxides of copper. In the case of CPS the grades were lower thus
(24.7%) at a grade of 14.5%. This dosage was then used in subse- illustrating that the higher solids recovery after NaHS addition
quent tests. using the CPS method increased the mass of gangue minerals
It can be seen in Fig. 1 that introducing NaHS into the pulp, recovered due to the increased froth stability. In fact that average
regardless of whether the reagent was added by the slug or CPS

700 140

600 120
Cum. Water recovery (g)

Cum. Solids recovery (g)

500 100

400 80

300 60

200 40

100 20

0 0
30 g/t 250 g/t 500 g/t 20:1 10:1 7:1 20:1 10:1 7:1
NaHS -300 to -400 mV -400 to -500 mV
SIBX only Slug C PS

Water Solids

Fig. 1. Cumulative solids and water recovery for the flotation of mixed ore with 30 g/t SIBX followed by slug sulphidisation with 250 g/t and 500 g/t NaHS and CPS at 300 to
400 mV and 400 to 500 mV using the following NaHS:SIBX ratios; 20:1, 10:1 and 7:1.
 K.C. Corin et al. / Minerals Engineering 102 (2017) 15–17 17

40 40
35 35

Cum. Cu recovery (%)

30 30

Cum. Cu grade (%)

25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
30 g/t 250 g/t 500 g/t 20:1 10:1 7:1 20:1 10:1 7:1
NaHS -300 to -400 mV -400 to -500 mV
SIBX Slug CPS

Recovery Grade

Fig. 2. Cumulative grade-recovery trends for the sulphidisation-flotation of mixed ore with 30 g/t SIBX followed by slug sulphidisation with 250 g/t and 500 g/t NaHS and CPS
at potential ranges of 300 to 400 mV and 400 to 500 mV using the following NaHS:SIBX ratios: 20:1, 10:1 and 7:1.

Cu recovery when NaHS was added did not vary significantly when but in a decrease in grades when compared to slug sulphidisation.
comparing slug and CPS addition procedures since in both cases Mineralogical analysis of the tailings samples obtained after sul-
the average recovery was in the region of 30%. phidisation showed that there was no residual chalcopyrite in
Mineralogical analysis of the tailings after slug sulphidisation the tailings and that a significant amount of oxide minerals had
treatment with 500 g/t NaHS was carried out. Two important been collected. Microflotation studies showed that sulphidisation
observations were made. Firstly, essentially all of the chalcopyrite favoured the recovery of malachite but not of chrysocolla. A pre-
that was not recovered in the pre-sulphidisation stage was recov- liminary techno-economic evaluation indicated that operations
ered after sulphidisation. Since the chalcopyrite in the feed to the using sulphidisation procedures could experience significant eco-
sulphidisation stage had been shown to be mostly liberated, it is nomic benefits by careful optimization of reagent dosages.
possible that some of it was tarnished due to in-situ weathering
or during storage and therefore required sulphidisation. Sulphidis- Acknowledgements
ation followed by xanthate flotation has been shown to recover
tarnished chalcopyrite (Clark et al., 2000) and other sulphide min- The Julian Baring Scholarship Fund (JBSF) and First Quantum
erals such as pentlandite (Newell and Bradshaw, 2007). Secondly, Minerals Ltd. (FQML).
all the other oxide copper minerals except chrysocolla responded
positively to the NaHS/xanthate flotation treatment. These findings References
are consistent with observations made by Kottgen and Bastin
(2009). Microflotation tests with NaHS and SIBX showed clearly Broughton, D.W., Hitzman, M.A., Stephens, A.J., 2002. Exploration history and
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colla did not float at all after such treatment. A techno-economic ed. Society of Economic Geologists, Boulder, Colorado, pp. 141–153.
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analysis of the overall results showed that CPS could achieve an Sci. Technol. 1 (4), 36–42.
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The objective of this study was to investigate the floatability of sulphide ion- selective electrode before flotation of oxidised lead-zinc-silver
a complex Kansanshi mixed copper ore comprising sulphide and dump material. Int. J. Miner. Process. 6, 17–30.
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alternative sulfidising reagent for the CPS flotation of oxide copper ores. In:
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grades were similar to that found when using only SIBX as collec-
tor. Using the CPS method resulted in an increase in Cu recovery

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