Bhp Billiton Ssm Development Pty Ltd.

Harald Muller

Houyuan Liu

Ivan Ratchev

Alexey Duarte

Graham Andrew Reynolds

Anthony Charles Chamberlain

Chad James Otto Czerny

Omar Yesid Caceres Hernandez

A process is described for the recovery of nickel and/or cobalt from laterite or partially oxidized lateritic ores having a substantial proportion of the iron present in the ferrous state. The process includes providing a laterite or partially oxidized laterite ore wherein a substantial proportion of the iron present in the ore is in the ferrous state; acid leaching the ore to provide a product leach solution containing at least ferrous iron, nickel and cobalt together with acid soluble impurities; and recovering the nickel and cobalt from the product leach solution with a selective ion exchange resin in an ion exchange process leaving the ferrous iron and other acid soluble impurities in the raffinate.

Nickel recovery from a high ferrous content laterite ore

An atmospheric leach process for the recovery of nickel and cobalt from lateritic ores includes providing limonitic and saprolitic ore fractions of a laterite ore; separately slurrying the limonitic and saprolitic ore fractions to produce a limonitic ore slurry and a saprolitic ore slurry; separating any limonitic type minerals from the saprolitic ore slurry to produce a saprolitic feed slurry; milling or wet grinding the saprolitic feed slurry; leaching the limonitic ore slurry with concentrated sulfuric acid in a primary leach step; introducing the saprolitic feed slurry to the leach process in a secondary leach step by combining the saprolitic feed slurry with the leached limonite slurry following substantial completion of the primary leach step, and releasing sulfuric acid to assist in leaching the saprolite feed slurry.

Atmospheric acid leach process for laterites

A process for producing a metallic nickel product with a low iron content, that includes: (i) providing an acidic product liquor; (ii) subjecting the acidic product liquor to an ion exchange process to absorb the nickel and part of the iron; (iii) eluting the nickel and iron to produce an eluate containing the nickel and iron. (iv) neutralising the eluate to leave an iron depleted eluate; (v) neutralising the iron depleted eluate to cause precipitation of nickel hydroxide containing low iron; (vi) calcining the nickel hydroxide to convert it to nickel oxide; (vii) subjecting the nickel oxide to direct smelting in the presence of a reductant to produce a molten nickel phase; and (viii) refining the molten nickel phase by oxidation to produce a metallic nickel product with low iron content.

Production of metallic nickel with low iron content

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Eleebana, Australia

Harald Muller