Production of clean copper sulfide concentrate

Currently produced base metal concentrates are penalized for minor elements like mercury, arsenic, antimony, which are considered as deleterious impurities. These elements show a harmful influence on the furnace and refining operation. The production of concentrate with a low content of these elements would provide better revenue for the producers of concentrates and would allow to avoid environmental problems resulting from the production of high concentrated industrial waste containing these hazardous elements. It was found that the minor elements are often disseminated in certain minerals. Successful separation weighs heavily on the determination of the qualitative and quantitative relationships between occurrence of the minor element and their major carriers, and the detailed determination of the mechanisms of surface phenomena taking place between carrier minerals and aqueous solution of different reagents. This fundamental knowledge allows to make propositions of new flotation schema of the industrial flowsheet. Some of the fundamental findings were already tested on full industrial scale showing high environmental and financial benefits. The mechanisms governing selective separation have been discussed.