TITLE:
Copper Oxide Ore Leaching Ability and Cementation Behavior, Mesgaran Deposit in IRAN
AUTHORS:
Shayan Khakmardan, Aref Shirazi, Adel Shirazy, Hassan Hosseingholi
KEYWORDS:
Leaching, Cementation, Copper Oxide, Malachite, VMS Copper Deposit
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Geology,
Vol.8 No.9,
August
3,
2018
ABSTRACT: One of the Iranian copper deposits that is located east of Iran and also known as a primeval one in that area is Mesgaran Field. Old mining works have been clearly seen in the area. Iran is located on global copper belt and as a result it has numerous potential areas as copper deposits. The purpose of this study is identifying possible potentialities of copper mining in less developed regions of Iran with basic modern technologies. In this study, laboratory investigations of this field were done on samples via leaching and the cementation method. According to the study purposes, acid concentration, temperature, time and pulp density were selected as the main factors that were tested in leaching studies. Moreover, pH, temperature, time and the amount of iron powder were factors which were tested for copper cementation. Optimum conditions of leaching studies with 99.11% recovery rate were obtained after 120 grams per liter of H2SO4, 80 degrees Celsius, 2 hours and 100 grams per liter of solid to liquid. On the other hand, optimum conditions of cementation by iron powder were resulted at more than 95% with a pH of 3, 45 degrees Celsius, 1 hour and 1.5 times more than the stoichiometric equation of required iron powder amount to precipitate copper.