Elsevier

Hydrometallurgy

Volume 23, Issues 2–3, January 1990, Pages 221-235
Hydrometallurgy

Research paper
The influence of various ions in the bioleaching of metal sulphides

https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-386X(90)90006-NGet rights and content

Abstract

The catalytic effect of various metallic ions (Hg2+, Co2+, Ag+, Bi3+ and Cu2+) in the bioleaching of a sphalerite concentrate and complex sulphide concentrate was studied. Bacteria of the type Thiobacillus ferro-oxidans adapted to sulphide concentrates were used.

The cations studied increase the copper dissolution from complex sulphides, with Ag+ and Hg2+ prominent with an extraction efficiency of 90% and 72.5%, respectively, compared with a 26.5% recovery in the absence of a catalyst.

The microbiological dissolution of the sphalerite improves considerably with the addition of Ag+ and Cu2+ as catalysts, with zinc dissolution of 90% Furthermore, it is shown that additional amounts of Cu2+ increase the percentage of metal leached.

The influence of catalytic ions in electrochemical processes of dissolution of complex sulphides is discussed.

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    Citation Excerpt :

    These results suggest that addition of reaction catalyst would be useful in low-temperature bioleaching to realize better copper recovery. In the case of chalcopyrite bioleaching, the catalytic effect of different metal ions has been studied so far: Among those metals tested, Ag ion was found to be effective in catalyzing chalcopyrite dissolution, whereas Co, Mn, Sb, Bi, Ni and Sn ions showed weak or no catalytic abilities (Ballester et al., 1990; Muñoz et al., 2007). The mechanism of Ag-catalyzed chalcopyrite leaching has been explained by different research groups based on abiotic leaching studies, such as via (i) improvement of electrical conductivity by formation of Ag2S inside S0 layer on the chalcopyrite surface (Nazari et al., 2012), (ii) Ag atom diffusion into the metal-deficient sulfur-rich passive layer formed on the chalcopyrite surface (Ghahremaninezhad et al., 2015) and (iii) Ag2S formation which rapidly consumes H2S produced via intermediate chalcocite (Cu2S) formation from chalcopyrite, indirectly accelerating chalcopyrite dissolution (Hiroyoshi et al., 2002).

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