Abstract

The continuous increasing of the global demand of copper and nickel metals raises the interest indeveloping alternative technologies to produce them from copper sulfide ore. Also, in line with Egypt's vision2030 for achieving the sustainable socioeconomic development which aims at developing alternative and ecofriendlytechnologies for processing the Egyptian ores to produce these strategic products instead of its importing. These metals enhance the advanced electrical and electronic industries. The current work aims at investigatingthe recovery of copper and nickel from Abu Swayeil copper ore using pug leaching technique by sulfuric acid. The factors affecting the pug leaching process including the sulfuric acid concentration, leaching time andtemperature have been investigated. The copper ore sample was characterized chemically using X-rayfluorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscope (SEM-EDX). A response surface methodology developsa quadratic model that expects the nickel and copper leaching effectiveness as a function of three controllingfactors involved in the procedure of leaching was also investigated. The obtained results showed that themaximum dissolution efficiency of Ni and Cu are 99.06 % and 95.30%, respectively which was obtained atthe following conditions: 15 % H2SO4 acid concentration for 6 hr. at 250 ℃. The dissolution kinetics of nickeland copper that were examined according to heterogeneous model, indicated that the dissolution rates werecontrolled by surface chemical process during the pug leaching. The activation energy of copper and nickeldissolution were 26.79 kJ.mol−1 and 38.078 kJ.mol−1 respectively; and the surface chemical was proposed asthe leaching rate-controlling step.