Scientific and Production Association “RIVS”, Saint Petersburg, Russia:

V. S. Trubilov, Head of Geotechnology Department
A. S. Klepikov, Leading Engineer of Hydrometallurgy Department, e-mail: A_klepikov@rivs.ru

Nowadays, exhaustion of copper raw materials base is explained by the fact that overwhelming majority of enterprises works by concentration technologies, developed for its high and average content in ores. According to the forecasts, copper content in ores in the nearest time will be decreased to 0.5%. At the same time, dumps of deposits contain large reserves of substandard, poor and oxidized ores, which makes them independent anthropogenic deposits. The most technologically simple and cheaper methods are dump or head leaching, successfully realized in various countries. The choice of one of two methods of dump raw materials processing are based on simultaneous observance of the following terms: imperviousity of underlying dumps of soils for solutions; satisfactory filtration of ore material in natural bedding in dump. Coarseness of dump material provides the required grade of copper extraction from it. Dump leaching technology can be applied in case of fulfillment of these conditions. Nonobservance of at least one condition leads to impossibility of dump leaching. According to this, heap leaching technology should be considered. Decision about realization of one or another scheme is made on the basis of complex of special researches, technicaleconomic calculations and results of experimental-industrial works. Dumps are long-term source of copper and salts with under dump waters of non-ferrous and heavy metals in environment. This problem solving consists exactly of realization of heap and dump leaching technology on such objects. This technology identifies the process of removal of metals with productive solutions with following obtaining of these solutions as marketable product. Enlarged technicaleconomic accounting, realized for the site of copper dump leaching from Kalmakir deposit dumps, showed economic reasonability of this technology implementation.

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