The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 02, 1980
Filed:
Jan. 15, 1979
Kartik A Narain, Tucson, AZ (US);
Cyprus Metallurgical Processes Corporation, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Abstract
Process for recovery of copper, molybdenum, gold and elemental sulfur in tailings from hydrometallurgical processing of copper sulfide ores, particularly chalcopyrite. The tailings are usually discarded, and thus the recovery of valuable elements therefrom makes the environmentally desirable hydrometallurgical processes of FIG. 1 economically feasible. The tailings are concentrated to a small bulk volume by froth flotation to reject barren gangue and the process (FIG. 2) proceeds by removing sulfur from the solid concentrate residue, preferably by volatilization or leaching with a sulfur solvent, and recovering the elemental sulfur; leaching the residue with ferric chloride to selectively dissolve copper and iron: recovering copper from the liquid, or sending it back to the hydrometallurgical circuit; leaching the residue from the ferric chloride leach with cyanide to selectively solubilize gold, and recovering gold from the liquid, recovering molybdenum ore from the residue from the cyanide leach by froth flotation, and recovering molybdenum from the molybdenum ore.