Copper Ore Flotation and Wet Beneficiation Process

Copper mines adopt a combination of flotation and wet leaching or direct wet leaching method, mainly used for difficult to select copper oxide or mixed copper ores

Copper ore flotation+wet beneficiation process flow

1.Preprocessing：Similar to traditional copper flotation processes, difficult to select oxidized or mixed copper ore is first crushed and ground to finely powder the ore, allowing useful minerals and gangue minerals to fully dissociate.

2.flotation：The slurry after grinding is sent to the flotation machine for flotation. In this process, various flotation agents such as collectors, foaming agents, and adjusters are added to promote the separation of useful minerals from gangue minerals. The goal of flotation is to enrich copper minerals to a certain extent, creating conditions for subsequent wet leaching.

3.Wet leaching：The intermediate product obtained from flotation is usually a product with a high copper content, which is then fed into the wet leaching equipment. During the wet leaching process, copper in copper minerals is dissolved by adding chemical reagents (such as sulfuric acid, cyanide, etc.) and controlling temperature, pH value, and other conditions to form a copper containing solution.

4.Solution treatment：The copper containing solution after wet leaching is further extracted and purified by filtration, concentration, and other treatments, ultimately obtaining a refined product of copper.

5.Tailings treatment：The tailings generated during flotation and wet leaching processes need to be treated, including tailings storage, backfilling, or other treatment methods, to reduce their impact on the environment.

Directly adopting the process of wet leaching

1.Direct wet leaching：For some copper mines that are difficult to treat through flotation processes, the wet leaching method can be directly adopted. After crushing and grinding the ore, the ground slurry is directly fed into the wet leaching equipment without undergoing flotation.

2.chemical reaction：During the wet leaching process, copper minerals in the ore are dissolved by chemical reactions by adding chemical reagents (such as sulfuric acid, cyanide, etc.) and controlling temperature, pH value, etc., forming a copper containing solution.

3.Solution treatment：The copper containing solution after wet leaching is further extracted and purified by filtration, concentration, and other treatments, ultimately obtaining a refined product of copper.

4.Tailings treatment：The tailings generated during the wet leaching process need to be treated, including tailings storage, backfilling, or other treatment methods, to reduce their impact on the environment.

The main advantage of these methods is that they can handle difficult to select or complex copper ores, improving the efficiency of copper extraction. However, they also place high demands on the selection of chemical reagents and process control, requiring proper treatment of the generated waste gas and tailings to reduce their impact on the environment.

Typical beneficiation plant

Jiangxi Yongping Copper Mine Dressing Plant: The mine is a large open-pit deposit mainly composed of copper and sulfur, mainly composed of secondary sulfide copper minerals and chalcopyrite. The upper layer is a weathered oxidation zone and a mixed zone. The selection plant adopts a combination of flotation and wet treatment processes to ultimately obtain copper concentrate and electrolytic copper, respectively. The specific process of wet process is as follows: