Chemical Mineral Processing

Chemical mineral processing is a process in which the useful components in mineral raw materials are enriched or purified to obtain concentrates or separate products by using the difference of chemical properties between minerals and chemical processing or chemical processing and physical beneficiation combined. It is one of the important methods to deal with poor, fine, and miscellaneous mineral raw materials, three wastes of mining and metallurgy, and environmental protection.

Brief History

In China, scrap iron was used to replace copper from bile water at the beginning of the Western Han dynasty (second century BC). There was a record of gold extraction by mercury in the Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic, written from the first century BC to the first century AD. In the tenth century, copper was produced by the bile copper method. In 1887, gold and silver were leached from ore by cyanidation, which opened up the way of modern chemical mineral processing. Since the 1940s, copper leaching...