Economic evaluation of available processes for treating oxide-copper ores

Several alternatives are available for processing low-grade copper ores. These include in-situ, heap, vat and agitation leaching, and may involve the conventional cementation step or the newly developed solvent extraction—electrowinning system. Each of these techniques have their inherent economic and operating advantages and disadvantages, and the selection of the optimum process for a given copper ore is solely based on economic evaluation of the applicable processes. In this paper, efforts have been made to provide engineering feasibility estimates for the above processes under varying operational conditions, such as ore grade and price of copper.