Column Experiments and Numerical Modelling For In-Situ Leaching of Sandstone Hosted Copper Deposit

Gautier Laurent and Caroline Izart and Lev Odisséevitch Filippov and Fabrice Golfier and Philippe Marion and Robert Joussemet and Frédéric Diot and Bénédicte Lechenard and Laurent Truche and Jean-Jacques Royer. ( 2017 )
in: Goldschmidt 2017

Abstract

The BioMOre EU Horizon 2020 project (www.biomore.info) aims at developping “deep-in situ biomining” technology which have recently received an increasing attention from research and industry as a cost effective method for recovering metals from deep burried deposits. It consists in injecting a leach solution into the targeted ore body for dissolving base metal bearing minerals, collecting the pregant solution and in regenerating the leach solution thanks to micro-organisms. This technology is being experimented at reactor scale on a Kupferschiefer copper deposit in Poland as part of the BioMOre project. In this contribution, we present laboratory column experiments investigating the effect of a leaching solution in contact with copper bearing ore crushed at different grain sizes in suitable micro-organism environment conditions. Three stages including (i) water washing, (ii) acid leaching, and (iii) ferric-acid leaching, are successively implemented for progressively dissolving salts, carbonate minerals, and finally copper bearing sulfides. Models have been implemented in PhreeqC in parallel to the column experiments. They consider a one-dimensional double porosity transport model, where dissolution reactions are described by kinetics. We rely on BRGM’s Thermoddem databases [1]. Key parameters such as proportion of advective and diffusive phases, and effective diffusion coefficients were refined by fitting experimental results. The leaching process was then simulated in 3D at a deposit mesh scale by coupling one-dimensional PhreeqC models with a streamline-based fluid flow simulation approach. Such models will be further used within the BioMOre project for optimizing well-design planning and recovery forecasts.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{laurent:hal-04066320,
 abstract = {The BioMOre EU Horizon 2020 project (www.biomore.info) aims at developping “deep-in situ biomining” technology which have recently received an increasing attention from research and industry as a cost effective method for recovering metals from deep burried deposits. It consists in injecting a leach solution into the targeted ore body for dissolving base metal bearing minerals, collecting the pregant solution and in regenerating the leach solution thanks to micro-organisms. This technology is being experimented at reactor scale on a Kupferschiefer copper deposit in Poland as part of the BioMOre project. In this contribution, we present laboratory column experiments investigating the effect of a leaching solution in contact with copper bearing ore crushed at different grain sizes in suitable micro-organism environment conditions. Three stages including (i) water washing, (ii) acid leaching, and (iii) ferric-acid leaching, are successively implemented for progressively dissolving salts, carbonate minerals, and finally copper bearing sulfides. Models have been implemented in PhreeqC in parallel to the column experiments. They consider a one-dimensional double porosity transport model, where dissolution reactions are described by kinetics. We rely on BRGM’s Thermoddem databases [1]. Key parameters such as proportion of advective and diffusive phases, and effective diffusion coefficients were refined by fitting experimental results. The leaching process was then simulated in 3D at a deposit mesh scale by coupling one-dimensional PhreeqC models with a streamline-based fluid flow simulation approach. Such models will be further used within the BioMOre project for optimizing well-design planning and recovery forecasts.},
 address = {Paris, France},
 author = {Laurent, Gautier and Izart, Caroline and Filippov, Lev Odiss{\'e}evitch and Golfier, Fabrice and Marion, Philippe and Joussemet, Robert and Diot, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric and Lechenard, B{\'e}n{\'e}dicte and Truche, Laurent and Royer, Jean-Jacques},
 booktitle = {{Goldschmidt 2017}},
 hal_id = {hal-04066320},
 hal_version = {v1},
 title = {{Column Experiments and Numerical Modelling For In-Situ Leaching of Sandstone Hosted Copper Deposit}},
 url = {https://hal.univ-lorraine.fr/hal-04066320},
 year = {2017}
}