Core Resources arsenic cleaner nominated for Innovation Challenge Award
INDUSTRY NEWS: Brisbane based mineral processing laboratory and engineering group, Core Resources has been selected as a finalist in the Australian Innovation Challenge awards.
Core has been nominated in the Minerals and Energy category of the awards for the development of a new technology for removing arsenic from copper, lead and nickel concentrates.
Called the ‘Toowong Process’ – after the Brisbane suburb – core describes the new development as a new hydrometallurgical technology that enables operations to remove arsenic, antimony, tin and mercury at the mine site prior to shipping a cleaned concentrate product.
The breakthrough is of some significance to the mining industry as arsenic has always been an issue for the copper industry.
However, with average arsenic grades are increasing, as well as restrictions on the amount of arsenic smelters are willing to accept, this is placing increasing pressure on many existing copper operations, and making several major global copper mineralisation occurrences unviable for mining.
The Toowong process selectively leaches arsenic, antimony, tin and mercury from specific minerals using a patented Alkaline Leach technology.
Its selling point is its ability to remove unwanted elements without substantially affecting the copper minerals – the cleaned concentrate is then suitable for shipping directly to smelters, eliminating the need for downstream copper metal recovery processes.
Using process chemistry developed at Core, the alkaline leach process is also largely self-sustaining.
Most of the reagent requirements are either generated from the concentrate in situ in the leach, or recovered downstream and recycled.
The leached arsenic is fixed using standard technologies into a stable, non-toxic form that can be managed in its original native location at the mine site – instead of being shipped to smelters across the world.
Core has been working to develop the process over several years.
This came to a head in 2012, with Core designing, constructing and operating a $2.5 million hydrometallurgical pilot scale demonstration of the process.
Over 34 days, 1.2 tonnes of Tampakan concentrate was treated.
Arsenic removal greater than 90 per cent was demonstrated at steady state conditions, lowering the arsenic grade from 1.1 per cent to 0.1 per cent.
The product from the pilot plant was a cleaned copper concentrate suitable for sale.
The technology is now the subject of a worldwide patent.
Core is unsurprisingly confident in the Towong Process being a potentially game-changing technology.
Its confidence buoyed by Professor David Way of JKTech who said, “The Toowong Process has the potential to unlock sites throughout the world that are currently considered unviable mineralisations for sustainable mining.”
Peter Munro, Senior Principal Consulting Engineer at Mineralurgy was also effusive in his support of the technology, saying, “This really looks like a ‘win-win’ situation as by using this Toowong Process the miners will be able to treat ore from existing operations that are high in arsenic and develop new deposits containing arsenic.”
“Smelters will receive ‘clean’ copper concentrate minimizing the problem of disposing of toxic wastes and residues which is becoming a major issue for operations even in China.”
Core is currently seeking commercialisation and development partners to enable the roll-out of the Toowong Process to industry.
“We have seen strong interest from a number of groups from across the industry,” Core Resources CEO Peter Rohner said.
The Australian Innovation Challenge winners will be announced on November 25 at the awards ceremony at the Questacon in Canberra.
The Toowong Process is the only mining related technology in the Minerals and Energy category.