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A study on copper-sulfur separation technology without lime
Published in Wang Yuehan, Ge Shirong, Guo Guangli, Mining Science and Technology, 2004
Some mine is huge porphyry copper ores. The ore is disseminated string. The mineral composition of ore is very simple: the greater part of the metal minerals is pyrite, copper pyrite; some is chalcocite; morsel is bornite, tennantite and so on. The ore is partly degraded in water and oxidized, the oxidized ratio is about 3% to 4%. In the primary ore, metal sulfide mineral is account for 4% to 5% total part, while the gangue mineral is about 95%. It is at large quartz, sericite in gangue minerals; the small part is chlorite, calcite, feldspar; a morsel part is biotite, thallite, diastatite, white mica, kaolin, hydrous and so on. In the ore there are some companying noble metal minerals, of which the main minerals are speculite Au-Ag mineral, free gold and so on. The analysis of sample constituent is shown in the Table 1.
Diagenetic stratiform copper-silver mineralization, Salta district, northwestern Argentina
Published in Adam Piestrzyński, Mineral Deposits at the Beginning of the 21st Century, 2001
During early diagenesis of the Yacoraite strata, the host-rock porosity was increased by the dissolution of primary carbonate, thereby preparing the otherwise compact sediments for the influx of metalliferous solutions. The ore-forming fluid, probably consisting of an oxidized low-temperature chloride brine carrying copper, lead, zinc and silver, would have originated in the underlying Pirgua redbeds. Chalcocite, bornite, chalcopyrite, tennantite-tetrahedrite, galena and sphalerite were precipitated by replacement of syndiagenetic pyrite and gypsum. The ore metals and their sulfides are zoned in the basal Yacoraite, with Cu-Ag-rich sulfides proximal to the redox boundary between footwall redbeds and overlying greybeds and Pb-Zn sulfides higher in the Yacoraite strata (Figure 3). The abundance of lead and zinc sulfides resembles similar abundances of these ore minerals in the Kupferschiefer. Mineralization followed most syn- and early-diagenetic events and preceded silicification and advanced burial diagenesis. Sulfur isotopes for fine- to coarse-grained pyrite (δ34S = -25 to -45 per mil) are typical of syndiagenetic biogenic fractionation, but the sulfur isotopes of ore sulfides (δ34S = -5 to -25 per mil) are decidedly heavier. The latter could have been derived from in-situ gypsum or from an influx of sulfate with the ore fluids. However, sulfate reduction is unlikely to have occurred at this stage because biogenic reduction would presumably have been inefficient after syndiagenetic burial and as well there is no evidence to support a high-temperature inorganic reduction. The variability of sulfur isotope values argues against a homogeneous sour-gas source of sulfide.
Challenges in processing copper ores containing sulfosalts
Published in Vladimir Litvinenko, Scientific and Practical Studies of Raw Material Issues, 2019
A. Kobylyanski, V. Zhukova, G. Petrov, A. Boduen
Currently, a serious amount (about 35.8%) of the total volume of ores utilized by the processing plant consists from pyrite ores with a high content of tennantite. The applied methods of processing of pyrite ores do not provide an opportunity to process effectively and to provide selective separation of the main sulfide minerals of copper and zinc in the presence of tennantite and enargite.
Rejection of antimony and bismuth in sulphide flotation – a literature review
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy, 2021
Leanne Kathleen Smith, Warren John Bruckard, Graham Jeffrey Sparrow
A similar approach to selective oxidation involves the manipulation of pulp potential effects. This approach has been tested on chalcopyrite-enargite systems (Menacho et al. 1993; Yen and Tajadod 2000; Guo and Yen 2005; Senior et al. 2006). Another arsenic-bearing copper mineral contributing to high arsenic levels in copper concentrates is tennantite. Tennantite forms a solid solution series with tetrahedrite with the composition of both minerals more generally described by Cu12(Sb,As)4S13 (i.e. the minerals are rarely wholly one or the other). Smith et al. (2012) explored the influence of pulp potential on the separation of chalcopyrite and tennantite/tetrahedrite from a number of arsenic-bearing copper ores and found that there are regions of pulp potential whereby the two minerals can be separated. Whether the separation is made in oxidising or reducing conditions depended upon the mineralogy, liberation and reagent selection, most notably the collector type used. With these ores the collector types were xanthates, dithiophosphates, and thionocarbamates. In one ore containing tennantite/tetrahedrite, assaying 0.061 wt% As and 0.009 wt% Sb, a separation between the non-tennantite copper minerals (NTCu), namely chalcopyrite, and tennantite/tetrahedrite was possible in oxidising conditions as shown in Figure 1 (Smith et al. 2012). Thionocarbamate collectors were used. Other pulp potential conditions used for separating chalcopyrite and tennantite to reduce arsenic levels could be explored for separating chalcopyrite and tetrahedrite to reduce antimony levels (Smith and Bruckard 2007).
Luzonite and associated Cu-excess tennantite from the Levant Sn–Cu deposit, Cornwall, England: Evidence for a high sulphidation hydrothermal event
Published in Applied Earth Science, 2021
Benjamin A. Grguric, Malcolm P. Roberts, Mark D. Raven, Kendal Martyn
Previous work on the Levant Mine vein paragenesis has demonstrated both a broad range of temperatures and fluid chemistries in episodic hydrothermal pulses were responsible for Sn and Cu mineralisation. On the basis of ore textures and mineral chemistry, we propose that at least one of these hydrothermal episodes involved high-sulphidation, oxidised fluids which resulted in the destabilisation of earlier-formed arsenopyrite, and deposition of luzonite and its replacement product Cu-excess tennantite, at temperatures below 280 °C. It is tentatively proposed that the luzonite–tennantite depositing event represented a pulse of essentially pure magmatic-hydrothermal fluid derived from the Land’s End Pluton.