Flotation separation of copper sulphides from arsenic minerals at Rosebery copper concentrator

The removal of arsenic bearing minerals from concentrates is becoming more important as environmental laws become ever stricter with regard to smelter emissions. The onus is shifting to concentrate producers to remove these minerals from their product, with penalties applying to materials containing greater than background amounts.The arsenic content of Rosebery copper flotation feed is mainly present as arsenopyrite (FeAsS), containing approximately 46.0% arsenic with the remainder of the arsenic in copper sulphosalts (tennantite (Cu₁₂As₄S₁₃)), in a solid solution series with tetrahedrite (Cu₁₂Sb₄S₁₃). Tennantite contains approximately 20.3% arsenic. Characterisation of the rougher and cleaner concentrates obtained during a plant survey showed that the arsenopyrite was appropriately rejected in the copper flotation circuit. However, tennantite showed similar flotation behaviour to the copper sulphide minerals so that the high arsenic content of the final copper concentrate was mainly in the copper sulphosalts. In this study, regrinding the copper rougher concentrate was investigated to reject tennantite in cleaner flotation. It was found that although finer grinding increased the mass fraction in the ultrafine fraction, the tennantite liberation only increased slightly. The copper selectivity against arsenic was improved significantly although the recovery of copper, silver and arsenic was lower. The difference in floatability of copper sulphide minerals and tennantite appears to increase at finer sizes. In this study, pH and Eh were also manipulated to further improve the selectivity of copper flotation against tennantite at fine particle sizes with some promise. In order to find an application in the Rosebery circuit, any changes must have a net economic benefit and the trade-offs and implications are discussed in this paper.