Copper & Gold Leaching from Hardrock Gold Mine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video @mineoperator Harry takes a high grade copper sample from a gold vein and leaches out the copper using dilute sulphuric acid.
The fun part is recovering the copper using hydrometallurgy and the reactivity series of metals to drop copper from aqueous Copper (ii) Sulphate solution using iron. We use an XRF instrument (X-ray Fluorescence) to measure the copper purity. Also, melting down the copper sponge to get physical metal to weigh and test. None of us are a metallurgist, chemist or geologist so if we speak or present a concept incorrectly, feel free to correct us in the comments we love to learn.
Enjoy watching us recover physical copper out of Chrysocolla, Chalcopyrite vein from a gold mine using simple chemistry.
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1200x Microscope used in video
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Thermo Scietific Hotplate Stirrers
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This is awesome. I have not seen anything on copper extraction. I have seen gold and silver, and copper is usually involved as part of the base metals of those two. But getting the copper out I have never seen. So good for you to show us how it's done.
We noticed that too Dale. We have lot's of copper ore to practice on. We'll try electrowinning in a future video. Thanks for watching Dale!
@@mineoperatorOh goodie, another experiment is in the opting!
@@firefox2716Why don't they go on a field trip to a producing facility and do a tour and video the experience for TH-cam?
I wait for youe second video about electrolysis
Seriously enjoy your videos. You don’t dumb it down
Holly Cows! This whole inorganic chemistry gave me flash backs to college, then university. Very profitable to have knowledge and skills, the fun begins when you love to apply them and create a reality. Access to the required tools sure helps.
If you use a perforated plastic bucket with the coarse ore in it, that fits in the leach beaker you can strain the fines off to the bottom and keep the bigger pieces clean. It also helps circulating the leach by simply lifting the leach bucket up.
An aquarium air bubbler underneath helps speed dissolution up. Keep the lid on for tiny drops flying out.
I‘ve handled things within boxes according to specific instructions based on stringent requirements and I have done so whilst using external cameras too.
It is a bloody nuisance to get the exposure right and damned I was to record even the procedure followed to bring the camera to the machine itself. Yes, card was full at some time too 😩
It is a nuisance to narrative and follow written instructions and keep an eye on the camera but doing it with H2SO4 in any concentration isn’t fun but necessary. Commend you doing this as safe as possible (got H2O2 droplets launched at me once, since then I‘m obsessive with eye protection) and the beautiful colours recorded.
Well done.
„narrate“ not narrative
It's probably worth thinking about a production scale leach plant. Also remember that electrowinning allows you to recover the acid as well as the copper so you can reuse the acid several times. As ever crushing the rock and sorting it for the blue bits (!) minimises the acid used and lost and keeps the acid solution as copper loaded as possible to maintain good yields at available currents. Given your location solar power would probably feed a great electrowinning setup with no power bill, or diesel costs.
Great points Seymour Pro. A parallel vein in the hanging wall is 2' thick and has chemically assayed at 2.5% Cu. We'll take your advice and look into a production scale Leach plant with electrowinning. If you have other ideas, feel free to reach out to us.
Yes, I would like to try a small 30-50 lb batch test recirculating electrowinning cell and see how long I can reuse the leach before needing to filter with activated carbon or resin. The commercial mines heap leach.
Make sure you test your acid consumption first. If there are a lot of carbonates in the gangue material, acid can end up being a considerable cost (+ disposal of gypsum tailings).
For your size of operation, stockpile it, enrich it with shaker table and if you can afford it a flotation plant and sell it as bulk to a smelter. Leach and EW plants are hard to get right, dangerous and generally very expensive.
@@mineoperatorYour Mind's Eye has been stimulated! Work with someone that can create a pilot plant that is energy neutral. Don't forget to study the wind, can store energy in a battery bank for 24/7 operation. You pioneer this, you will be leading edge on how to extract value out of small-scale mining deposits. To infinity and beyond!
Very cool demo...thanks for keeping it simple 👍
Beautiful scope video. Thanks
Excellent video! The latest theory is there was mining all over the Giza plateau and the pyramids were used to make the sulfuric acid and other chemicals. To think this was going on pre 2500bc is amazing.
OMG. I don't know how much more of this I can take this evening. I just watched SilverStroll video and you have a clock that runs backwards... L0L. Oh My, Priceless !!!!
Really good video. Easy to watch and learn. I did miss about 10 seconds of the process trying to figure out the clock. Thanks for explaining.
It was a fun distraction. Thanks for watching Fredd King.
That was badass. Thanks for telling us your clock goes backyard. I was really questioning the process when saw clock going backwards. Excellent refinement
The clock ⏰️ was a fun touch to add to the video. I'm glad it didn't deter you. Thanks for watching. We're gonna try electrowinning in a future video.
Awesome information!! I love to see this type of stuff
Thanks Garrett! We'll make a future video on electrowinning copper.
@@mineoperatorI'm a little delayed but I'm looking forward to seeing that video lol but I'll wait till you guys are done mining with Jason lol
Man, I got burned pretty good from sulfuric vapors one time,. Good to see your protective equipment
Sorry to hear about the burn. Yeah, we do our best to be safe when using acids. We're looking for different reagents for leaching copper. Preferably cost-effective reagents.
That was awesome Chad!
Thanks Mike! Harry did a great job with this bench scale test. We have lot's of copper ore to practice on.
@@mineoperator just a few lbs 🤣🤣 loved this video man!! Right up my ally
Beautiful looking copper ore!😮
Very cool, can’t wait to start doing stuff like this. Will be a ton of fun for our kids.
Happy to hear that. We love the science involved. I'm sure they will too.
@@mineoperator they love science and they love hunting rocks with me, one of my girls can’t wait to blow things up 😂🏴☠️
very cool close ups
We're going to include that more often. Close ups reveal a whole other world easily missed. Thanks!
More, please! Thanks!
You got it! Thanks for watching.
Well done! Given that the composition of Chalcopyrite is relatively simple, finer particle size would not make that much of a difference.
Mate I loved it. Thanks for doing this.
Thanks, Unhinged Harry. More to come.
Nice learning experiment now get the gold men thanks for the video
You bet John. Thanks for watching.
That clock would make me go mad lol, you guys wear so many hats,
Thanks for noticing. We keep learning every day. Glad you enjoyed the clock 😉
An Epiphany. Be this the initial recovery of Cu for your company, run this procedure again 3xs the load, to recover a goodly chunk of Cu. Find someone crafty, goldsmith or indigenous craftsman, along with your ability to smelt metal, to fashion a functional yet crude looking, arrowhead AND spearhead. You could use the Spearhead as your company logo and give a summary of its creation in your channel and website as an intro.
Great idea 💡!
Grazie per il tuo lavoro!
Ti scrivo dalle Alpi del Sud Tirolo in Europa.
Sto studiando la storia dei nostri antenati minatori nell' età del bronzo.
Credo avessero il tuo stesso spirito di ricerca e condivisione delle esperienze. ...
Nei prossimi giorni ripetero il tuo esperimento su campioni di minerale per cercare tracce degli antichi minatori. 33:06
And if you electrowin it, you regain the sulfuric to leach more ore.
You want even automate the whole process
We will do that thankyou
Okay, now that was #€*¥in cool!!!!!
Yes I want the other reaction. I think everyone does that geeks out on this science stuff.
You have no idea how much this video speaks to me.
Thank you
Seriously man, thank you
We'll keep them coming Frank!
@@mineoperator wishing for a love button. I have so much respect for you not making that a dumbed down video for the masses but instead explained it scientifically for those who can follow the bouncing ball.
Good on you!!! Heck yeah!!!
SO #UCKIN’ COOL!!
@@frankyensanSupercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Eh?
I just want to know how you can see your aqua blue beta in the blue water. I would think that dying your aquarium water blue distracts from the fish.
Enjoying your videos keep them coming.
You left a WHOLE LOT of metal in that ore!
Does sulfuric acid effectively react with sulfide ores? I thought that sulfide ores must be roasted first in order for the sulfuric acid to do it's trick. Please enlighten me with your experience and knowledge and apologies for bothering you. Im just a bit too invested in this stuff mentally, it so satisfying and entertaining XD
@savvy.dispatch Great question. Unfortunately, not. If you're looking to oxidize copper sulfide ores such as chalcopyrite, bornite, covellite, or chalcocite, an alkaline solution will prevent passivation. Acidic lixiviants will be consumed rapidly and require more maintenance. Roasting is an option for small-scale applications that I am aware of. I have a technical report on alkaline lixiviants. I'll review it again and provide further guidance. I need a refresher on this topic.
Just some food for thought, people are literally dieing, steeling cooper. Have you thought of selling the ore? I guarantee you someone will be willing to leach the copper and what ever other valuable minerals are there, out of the ore for resale.
Hey Shaggy Dude. Awesome name btw. We have thought about that. One retired mining friend told me to get proficient at getting the ore out of the ground. You don't have to know how to do it all. There will always be buyers for ore. We need to look into who to sell this ore too.
Actually the chrysacholla is worth more as jewelry grade stone than it is to process it? All the specimen stuff is high dollar. Get a tile saw and start cutting it for patterns you like.
Of course the more gemmy the better.
Great idea 💡 👍. We'll give it a try.
Those stone you crashed are Turquoise gems and are many times more valuble than gold you extracted from them .
The stone that was not able to be slabbed and cut into cabs was used. It was way to fractured from our initial extraction method. We have all the stable AAA chrysocolla.
That's a pretty neat experiment
Thanks Max! We need to explore a mine together soon.
@@mineoperator you know I’m down! Whenever you’re ready man…
Cool science kit! :)
Thanks RangieNZ!
You can also do this with table salt peroxide and white vinegar less. Much safer
Thanks for letting us know! We'd like to try it.
Nice vid, we work the same area, I use hydrochloric acid and ammonia method outside in large container with aeration added and let the sun provide my heat. Takes longer but found it cheaper. I’m Ronnie , Ron has my number if you want specific details.
Wow when I add sulfuric acid that fast to room temp water it instantly boils!
I wonder if they are shorting you on how much acid they are selling you!
Good point.
I would like to see "elctro-winning". Thanks for thus education!
Will do! We're working on two types of leach reagents and will keep you posted.
Just the coloration alone of that ore would make some great slab specimens.
We have been wondering 🤔 the same thing. I think we'll start offering that. We need to get our website up.
@@mineoperator Happy to help.
@@mineoperatorI have made key ring holders out of Cu bus bar pieces 3 x 1 x 3/8. Can put a logo and dimple, then buff, polish. You'll know you got your keys by the weight.
Excellent video i refine a little bit bit of escrap chasing that monkey !!
Copper is projected to be around five dollars a pound soon .
I believe it! This is a major area of interest for us. We plan on publishing more copper leaching videos in the future.
So for your leach solution can you re use it? What would be the prosess of cleaning out the iron to leach more copper ?
For my ability if I were to reuse the Copper Sulphate, I would need to use electrowining to remove the copper out of the solution. Balance the Sulphuric acid to water ratio to 5% and its good for another leach.
Excellent experiment.
Consult:
For a ton of mineral, what would be the dosage of the water and acid solution?
as you mention, I think the 1 liter liquid solution may have been enough for 1 pound of sample. I am very grateful for the excellent work, I had never seen how metallic copper is obtained from copper rock.
The ratio is 5% sulphuric acid. The volume of water needed for a ton, I dont know. I will need to find out what the saturation point is for Copper at 5% sulphuric acid. Only way I know how to measure is specific gravity.
did you find the answer to that?
the forbidden powerade
Very interesting experiment! What you said at the end of the video makes it sound like you guys won't go after xopper comercially. I understand if its not viable, but I would be interested to see more copper, next to the gold or course! 😅
The process with acids shown here probably isn't financially profitable. I'd imagine smelting would be a way to process such ore on large scale? 🤔
We want to try a few different reagents and recovery methods such as electrowinning. Dezo, Potassium Iodide, and Eco-Goldex O series might be much cheaper. Who knows, maybe we'll get a large exploration company interested in our project.
@@mineoperator great ideas, I'm looking forward to seeing more videos!
Love the video !!!
Question though.... after the xrf, the sample showed three9 copper and a .07+- Au.
Can that amount of gold alone make that copper such a brassy color ?
Although perhaps the color is skewed by the camera and the sample may not be as "brassy" as it looks.
I believe the discoloration or brassy color on the copper is from the melting/cooling process, oxidation, impurities and flux. If I pickled in dilute sulphuric acid 5%, the borax and other impurities will come off leaving a bright copper shine.
@@mineoperator Electrowinning gives purity.
I would grind it to -500 mesh and work it in a stirring slurry tank to ensure 100% extraction.
Otherwise, you're leaving too much metal in the gangue.
Once it has been stirred 48 hours as a slurry, then let it settle 48 hours, and siphon off the solution to reduce the necessity for trying to mass filter it.
Thanks for the suggestion! Do you think you'd create slimes that would need to be filtered out with a grind so fine? -500 mesh is extremely fine and wouldn't be possible to scale up, unless we buy a ball mill. But slimes/silts would have to be addressed.
Going from 1/8- to 500- is a little extreme. You want to be able to transfer your test method into production... considering cost and what will actually work.
I would suggest getting material to mostly 80- ..and see if there's any difference in recovery .
@@mineoperator Personally, I would use mass salt flotation if the mineral content seems rich enough, otherwise, I would use a vat leach and decantation to get the process going.
For the cost, while salts can readily float away a lot of gangue with no potential loss of the costly salts [assuming you know to filter the float], if the minerals are hard to get to by flotation, one can simply use an ammonia leach to take away the ligands of the desired minerals, and leave the less desired materials.
A warm ammonia solution is no less dangerous than a cyanide solution, but easier to obtain, and works in a way which produces fewer long term hazardous byproducts.
What is the percentage of gold in this sample or copper piece?
Doing Sampling shouldn't it be 200 mesh to have the greatest surface area ?
Since crushing is the most expensive part of mineral processing, we would have to perform some bench scale testing to determine how little crushing can be performed to recover the most copper. If you can recover 85-90% from a coarse crush for heap leaching, would it be worth it in CAPEX to install the equipment, power requirements, ultra-fines handling, filtering, to grind down 100% to 200 mesh to recover the remaining 10%. It's definitely worth the work to find out. If the CAPEX you can afford will only accommodate a coarse crush, you'll be stuck at 85-90% recover until you can afford the upgrades.
Can a dacron bag handle the acid I wonder? I centrifuge rather than filter when I can.
Yes, it can. Just make sure your pump and fittings are rated for acids.
Try a similar experiment with white vinegar and electrolytes.. cabon from new d batteries and. Stainless steel plates. Electrolytes is the only way to get pure copper. The vinegar works but my memory is flipping on the type of vinegar...might not matter.
Typo electrolysis
That's our next experiment. We'll look into the process using vinegar. We may compare that with other reagents on the market.
@@mineoperator I think they say you can stretch a ounce of gold into a mile long wire..I wonder about copper..a half mile?
how can we speed up the leaching process? By heating?
I use 40 deg Celsius. But I would read the published papers on sulphuric acid leaching and check out Metallurgy 911.
HCl and potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate then filter and put zinc bolt in there done in 20 minutes
We'll have to give this a try! Thanks for the suggestion Ranch Mechanic.
Dont EVER add water to sulphuric, always sulphuric to water. Ask me how I know x 1000 litre tank=BOOM 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Which gas did you use to melt the copper?
Oxyacetylene
How can I determine the amount of leaching solution required based on the weight of copper ore?
How much copper ore are you trying to leach?
@@mineoperator A ton
Whats name of first chemical sulfric acid or nitric acid??😮
In this experiment only sulphuric acid is used at 5%.
Thanks a lot❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
After Dissolved the copper in sulfric acid, which one acid is used for seperate copper powder from this copper solution. ?? such as (mcbs) solution is used for gold powder to separate from aqua regia. . i hope you understand my question. mean which chemical or acid is used for copper separate from copper solution. . except steel or iron . . . ❤❤❤❤❤❤
The only three ways I am able to get copper out of copper (II) Sulphate is adding iron, electrowinning and activate carbon filtration. I don't know of another acid or liquid to drop the copper from copper (II) sulphate.
Thank you sir❤❤❤❤❤
Do you have a draft hood??
Hi Danny, yes we do.
Maybe try to produce a copper product like wire or something and the copper would be worth more..in theory. I think you would yield more copper if ground finer and you added the little stir spiner in first step.
Great idea Travis. We'll give it a try.
Hey.. Question.. about accuracy of Au content with the XRF...I smelted 100g concentrate added Cu and the XRF said .08 percent.
@@travisjochimsen5426 Is your XRF a 40kv unit or 50kv? What type of anode? I presume you were using precious metals mode on the metal button/prill?
@@mineoperator LA gold assayers did the XRF.. I would assume so. I've gotten a little "flak" about my results..so I was wondering what your opinion is..with the experience you've had..
@@mineoperator the XRF did all metals,it picked up 3% lead, the iron..silver.. nickel... If that helps you assume what setting ect.
What would be left if you had boiled off the water?
Great question. I'm still doing some research to give you a good answer. I believe some sodium or potassium salts, along with other base metals that went into dissolution but didn't drop out with iron, such as zinc or manganese. Still doing some research on that one.
@@mineoperatorThis is where a freeze dryer with an acid trap would be handy.
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always wet the filter paper in funnel before adding filtrate
Copy that. Thanks!
So about a half a quarters worth of copper 😅
Yep. Sure would take a lot of copper to make any $. Fun experiment though.
@@mineoperator i agree was totally fun to watch! learned the process that's what matters!
You could make more money selling specimens 😮
I working with aluminum is a lot faster then iron .and don’t worry about another metals
Copy that. We'll try that on one of our next tests. Thank you! 😊