Sulfation roasting characteristics of copper-bearing materials

In this study, the sulfation roasting characteristics of copper-bearing ore and its flotation products as chalcopyrite concentrate and tailings were investigated in detail. For this aim, the roasting-leaching experiments and thermal analyses were conducted on the samples. As a result of the leaching of sulfated products obtained from the roasting experiments, the maximum Cu extractions were achieved as 94.7%, 99.5% and 82.7%, for run of mine, chalcopyrite concentrate and the flotation tailings, at the roasting temperatures of 550, 650 and 525 °C, respectively. It was also found that the copper extractions began to decrease owing to decomposition of copper sulfates above these temperatures. It was indicated that the decomposition temperature of copper sulfates differ for each samples. On the other hand, thermal gravimetric and differential thermal analyses were subjected to identify the thermal behaviors of the samples. The results showed that the formation of metal sulfates occurred in a wide temperature range (394–650 °C) for chalcopyrite. On the contrary, copper sulfation reactions took place at narrow temperature ranges of 450–560 °C and 480–550 °C for the run of mine ore and the flotation tailing, respectively.