METHOD TO LEACH METALS FROM ORES, TAILINGS AND CONCENTRATES AND A DEVICE TO IMPLEMENT IT Russian patent published in 1994 - IPC

FIELD: hydrometallurgy. SUBSTANCE: method to leach metals is based on mixing solid and liquid phases formed by crushed ore or concentrate and leaching agent solution in a sealed chamber. Pulp circulating recharging from one chamber into another one is performed by feeding pressurized upcoming or downcoming co- current or swirl stream of leaching solution into filled chamber. Device to implement this method has the first loading-exchanging chamber and one or several additional loading-exchanging chambers. Adjoining chambers are connected to each other through circulation pipeline joined to pulp inlet branch pipe fixed to the bottom of upstream chamber vessel and to pulp feed branch pipe fixed to the top of downstream chamber vessel. Each chamber of the device has agent solution feed branch pipe with pressure pipeline joined to it. This pipeline comes through the pump into a store reservoir of leaching agent. There is a solution discharge branch pipe with discharge pipeline joined to it. This pipeline is led to the same reservoir. A sump may be used as the reservoir when the device is operated as a part of mining equipment. Each branch pipe has controlled cutout valve. The chambers are of toroidal or cylindrical shape with bottoms being predominantly conical, which transform into concave spherical or plane surfaces near cone tops. Agent solution feed branch pipes may be disposed in both upper and bottom part of the chambers. Ore or concentrate composition and grain size, requirements imposed on metal leaching degree and leaching time affect the design of branch pipes, their location in the chamber and disposition as to solution discharge branch pipes. Ten design variants and locations of the above branch pipes are described. The method and the device allow one to increase uniformity and intensity of mixing solid and liquid phases of the agent to ensure speeding up the process of leaching, and to increase metal extraction from ores. The method and the device may be used in other applications, for instance, in both the metallurgy, and mining and quarreling. EFFECT: high leaching efficiency. 26 cl, 11 dwg