Abstract
The growing use and acceptance of electric vehicles (EV), as evidenced by the record sales of over 750 thousand vehicles in 2016 and a current global EV stock of 2 million vehicles, is putting pressure on sourcing raw materials such as cobalt , and to a lesser extent, nickel . Global supply is poorly diversified, with 50–60% of global cobalt production sourced solely from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). One potential source for cobalt and nickel are low-grade nickeliferous pyrrhotite tailings, of which 50–100 million tonnes are present in the Sudbury area alone. This paper presents the extraction of cobalt and nickel from this material using a combination of flotation and bioleaching technologies. The findings of a high-level techno-economic analysis of the proposed processing flowsheet are presented.
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References
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the company that provided the pyrrhotite concentrate, and Derek Smith and the Analytical Services Group at CanmetMINING.
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© 2018 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
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Cameron, R. et al. (2018). Extraction of Cobalt and Nickel from a Pyrrhotite Rich Tailings Sample via Bioleaching. In: Davis, B., et al. Extraction 2018. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95022-8_225
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95022-8_225
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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