Abstract
This study tested the removal of arsenic from copper ore concentrate via a mechanochemical treatment by planetary ball milling. The harmful components of ore, such as arsenic, are increasing year by year and decreasing the copper grade, therefore there is a strong need to improve the separation of arsenic from copper ore. The effect of grinding as a result of chemical activation caused by mechanochemical treatment was evaluated by XRD and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) measurements. From the results of the XRD analysis, several crystalline minerals were identified from the original samples. The diffraction peaks of the original samples were reduced by grinding, although grinding did not generate any new diffraction peaks. The comparison of the results of grinding in dry and wet conditions showed that the rate of disappearance of the crystalline minerals was faster in dry grinding than in wet grinding. To clarify the chemical state of arsenic in copper ore, XAS analysis was carried out. The results indicated that the arsenic compound changed from sulfide, in the original sample, to oxide after grinding. As a result of oxidation, the arsenic was easy to dissolve in a water and alkaline solution, and optimized dry and wet grinding conditions achieved up to 76% arsenic removal efficiency.
Highlights
Copper smelting is an important technology used to develop industrial and social infrastructure.In general, copper ore is ground as a preliminary treatment to separate and concentrate the copper components
Copper grade and the copper recovery rate are prioritized in current mining operations, so grinding has rarely been performed with consideration of the handling of harmful components in ore
The elution rate was defined as the ratio of the mass concentration of each element dissolved in the elution test to the mass concentration in the original sample
Summary
Copper smelting is an important technology used to develop industrial and social infrastructure.In general, copper ore is ground as a preliminary treatment to separate and concentrate the copper components. Copper grade and the copper recovery rate are prioritized in current mining operations, so grinding has rarely been performed with consideration of the handling of harmful components in ore. As removal treatment in the copper smelting process has been widely studied by many researchers in the past decades. Both pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical methods are used in As removal processes [5,6,7,8]. Most studies focus on the hydrometallurgical treatment of the ore or waste of smelting processes, mainly using water, acid, and alkaline leaching methods [9]. The different leaching rates of arsenic in water and diluted sulfuric acid from copper smelter wastes were compared by Kashiwakura et al [10]. Liu et al studied the leaching process of arsenic in a sulfide system and showed that the high arsenic leaching rate might be obtained by high consumption of sulfide and alkali [11,12,13,14]
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