Nickel grades in PS in laboratory column tests reached 500–2,000 mg/l. The nickel grade in pregnant solutions (PS) reached 120 mg/l and nickel was extracted in the form of nickel cathode. The most successful and complete ISR test was completed at the Ekibastuz-Shiderty deposit where sulphurous acid was used as the leaching agent.
Successful laboratory and field pilot ISR tests have been completed in the past years however at several Urals deposits including Tochilnogorskoe (Lipovskaya group), Kungurskoye and Rogozhinskoe (Cheremshanskaya group), and Ekibastuz-Shiderty (Seredkin et al., 2016 Seredkin et al., 2019). ISR has never been used for nickel-cobalt laterite deposits at the industrial scale. These deposits were silicified in Cenozoic time under cover of young sediments and are mainly represented by silicate mineralisation with quite low nickel and cobalt grades: Ni 0.3–1.3%, Co 300–500 ppm. The deposits occur within zones of ultramafic massifs of various ages and genesis. The Ural-Kazakhstan province hosts Mesozoic nickel-cobalt laterite deposits with Mineral Resources containing 0.2 to 3 Mt of nickel metal. Nickel pyrometallurgical plants of the Urals are currently closed, and AAL, PAL and HPAL test work did not demonstrate viable economic parameters. All these methods are not economical however, for deposits in the Urals and Kazakhstan. Hydrometallurgical methods include AAL, PAL, HPAL and heap leaching technologies. Modern processing of nickel-cobalt ores generally involves pyrometallurgical / smelting and hydrometallurgical methods. Furthermore, commodities need to be readily amenable to dissolution by leaching solutions over a reasonable period, with an acceptable consumption of leaching reagents. For ISR to be successful, however, deposits need to be permeable. As a result, there is little surface disturbance. In-situ recovery (ISR) transfers hydrometallurgical processing of mineralised bodies to the subsurface to directly obtain solutions of commodities. CSA Global congratulates first author, Principal Consultant, 1 Maxim Seredkin, and authors 2Mikhail Savenya, 2Sergey Sukleta, 3Baurzhan Duisebayev on their recently accepted technical paper: ‘ISR – Emerging Technology for the Extraction of Nickel and Cobalt from Laterite Deposits.’ĭr Seredkin will present at ALTA 2020 between 7-14 November in Perth, Western Australia.
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