Imagine that I have a copper based ore which also consists platinum group metals. Pt , Pd, Au, Ag are the elements in my Cu based ore. So how can I extract these elements separated from each other? I am wondering about metallurgical, most cost effectiveprocess and chemical reactions behind that extraction.
Hi Dennis,
Actually I am not dealing with rocks, I just want to learn about metallurgical process and chemical reactions. So my question is simple what are the chemical reactions behind extraction process? Just think about the elements I mentioned above.
I am not familiar with the metallurgical process, but I guess that this is done by ehtracting the metals and then refining the copper, then from the residue the platinum, gold, etc. are extracted.
I don't think you can extract platinum without extracting thecopper.
PGMs from Cu ore are not extracted directly. They are generally extracted only after recovery of copper by smelting-electroreffining route. The anode slime generated in copper electrorefining contain PGMs and other metals. Several approaches are available in literature to recover these metals step wise. Typically, anode slime is subjected to decopperisation step to recover all the copper content and part of tellurium. Decopperised residue udergoes deselenisation step to recover selenium. The deselenised anode slime is then sujected to dore smelting and subsequent recovery of PGMs. A review of different processes is given in the following paper.
Jhumki hait, R K Jana and S K Sanyal (2009) Processing of copper electrorefining anode slime: a review. Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy (Trans. IMM C), 118 (4). pp. 240-252. also available at http://eprints.nmlindia.org (search authors)
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