Simultaneous leaching of seafloor massive sulfides and polymetallic nodules

• Published in: Minerals
• Main Authors: Kowalczuk, Przemyslaw, Bouzahzah, Hassan, Kleiv, Rolf Arne, Aasly, Kurt
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2019
• Subjects: Mineralforedling; Mineral processing; VDP::Materialteknologi: 520; VDP::Materials science and engineering: 520; Arctic; Pacific
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2618829; https://doi.org/10.3390/min9080482

Simultaneous leaching of seafloor massive sulfides (SMS) from Loki’s Castle on the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge (AMOR) and polymetallic nodules (PN) from Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Central Pacific Ocean was studied. Leaching tests were conducted using sulfuric acid and sodium chloride, at a temperature of 80 °C for 48 h under reflux. The effect of PN-to-SMS ratio was examined. It was shown that simultaneous leaching of two different types of marine resources was possible resulting in high dissolution rates of metals. The proposed process has many advantages as it does not require pyrometallurgical pretreatment, and yields solid products (i.e., silica, barite, elemental sulfur, albite, microcline, muscovite), which might be utilized for various industrial applications. publishedVersion © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).