Commissioned Project: Somika, Mining & Mineral Processing Company

Somika has already commissioned continuous leaching plant, latest Counter Current Decanters with Continuous Filtration System and Horizontal Belt Filters.

Copper is extracted using an organic reagent from low acid and copper-rich liquid (produced from leaching). The reaction takes place in a very specific manner. Somika has focused on efficient metal recovery technology that elevates recovery of metal from waste solutions.

Cobalt

Purification of primary cobalt leach solution through direct EW of copper

Direct electro winning of cobalt from leach solution

Copper

Direct electro winning of cathode copper from dump and heap leach projects

Replacement of conventional electro winning tanks in copper SX-EW

Production of copper powder

Leaching and electro winning of copper from copper refinery tank house sludge’s

Somika has also commissioned the Copper Solvent Extraction (SX) plant to increase capacity of the Copper & Cobalt.

Conventionally, a pyro-metallurgical process known as smelting is used to recover copper. In this process, copper ore is mined, crushed, ground, concentrated, smelted and refined. The mining, crushing and grinding portions of the processing are extremely energy intensive since the rock must be reduced essentially to talcum powder fineness in order to separate the copper-bearing minerals from it.

The SX/EW Process is a hydrometallurgical process since it operates at ambient temperature and the copper is in either an aqueous environment or an organic environment during its processing until it is reduced to the metal.

The SX/EW process provides Somika with a tool that makes the extraction of copper from its ores significantly more environmentally friendly than by the use of the conventional smelting process.

To ensure that most of the Cu present in the PLS is extracted, it is proposed to have neutralization of aqueous phase.