Chemistry chosen for the feed.
We work across the main leach systems and choose the one that suits the mineral, the metals and the market. Where reagent cost is what stops a project, our acid-regeneration process can change the answer.
Most extraction recovers one metal and discards the rest.
Today’s extraction routes are mostly sulphate-based or involve smelting. They tend to focus on a single metal, leave large volumes of iron-bearing residue and recover none of the energy held in sulphide minerals. Old tailings around the world still hold the metals that earlier plants could not recover.
Chloride chemistry can take many of those metals into solution together, and has interested metallurgists for more than a century. Few plants use it for one reason: without an efficient way to recycle hydrochloric acid, reagent costs sink the flowsheet. That is the problem our acid-regeneration process solves.
- Acid returned
- 30–35% HCl. Conventional pyrohydrolysis (spray or fluid-bed roasting) returns acid below 20%.
- Iron
- Leaves as high-purity hematite with a market value, not as residue for disposal.
- Metals in the liquor
- Recovered. Pyrohydrolysis cannot selectively recover them.
- Energy
- Avoids the costly, energy-intensive roasting step.
Pilot plant · in operationLive loop
What we design, from leach to product.
Our principals have designed and operated each of these in commercial plants and pilot campaigns. A new flowsheet draws on whichever the feed calls for.
- Leaching Chloride · sulphate · nitrate
- Acid regeneration Hydrolysis · acid recovery
- Solid–liquid separation Thickening · CCD · filtration
- Solvent extraction SX
- Ion exchange, batch and continuous IX · ISEP
- Precipitation and crystallisation Salts · oxides · powders
- Electrowinning Cathode metal
- Effluent treatment and reagent recycle Water · residue
Where acid regeneration changes the economics.
Each route below depends on regenerated acid. In each, the incumbent technology falls short or does not exist.
VTM ores and mineral sands
- Feed
- Vanadiferous titaniferous magnetite; zircon tailings
- Products
- TiO₂ for pigment, V₂O₅ for flow-battery electrolyte, hematite
Titanium and vanadium are normally recovered by separate pyrometallurgical routes, each of which ignores the other metal. Titanium comes from a smelter slag that needs a second high-temperature chloride step; vanadium comes from salt roasting, which leaves the titanium behind. Our flowsheet recovers high-purity TiO₂ and V₂O₅ together, with the iron as hematite.
Nickel laterites and ferronickel slag
- Feed
- Limonite, transition and saprolite ores; ferronickel slag
- Products
- Nickel, cobalt, hematite, magnesia, alumina
Over 70% of the world’s nickel is in laterites, which are also a source of cobalt outside the DRC. High-pressure acid leaching treats only the limonite horizon and leaves about 1.5 tonnes of unfilterable iron residue per tonne of ore. The chloride route treats every horizon, roughly doubling the usable resource, cuts residue to about 20% of the ore mined and recovers iron, magnesium and aluminium as products.
Electric arc furnace dust
- Feed
- EAF dust from steel recycling
- Products
- High-purity zinc oxide, hematite, sodium bisulphate
Steelmaking produces around six million tonnes of EAF dust a year. Where it is treated at all, Waelz kilns make an impure zinc oxide that needs further refining, at a high energy and carbon cost. Our route makes high-purity zinc oxide directly, plus sodium bisulphate for the fertiliser industry, and suits modular plants on site from 10 tonnes a day.
Pyrrhotite tailings
- Feed
- Pyrrhotite-rich tailings or primary pyrrhotite
- Products
- Nickel, copper, cobalt, PGMs, hematite or sponge iron, sulphur, power or hydrogen
Pyrrhotite, about 50% iron and 35% sulphur, is common in tailings, drives acid mine drainage and cannot be treated by incumbent processes. The chloride route recovers its base and precious metals and its iron, and captures the mineral’s energy either as electric power or as hydrogen. The hydrogen can reduce the hematite to sponge iron for steelmaking without mining iron ore.
Spent lithium-ion batteries
- Feed
- NMC (EV) and LCO (consumer) cells
- Products
- Nickel, cobalt, copper, high-purity manganese sulphate, lithium carbonate
Most battery recycling smelts the cells, which uses a lot of energy and recovers little beyond nickel, cobalt and copper. Hydrometallurgical alternatives usually chain several solvent-extraction circuits. Our process avoids solvent extraction and produces battery-grade products of every metal, including lithium and manganese.
Manganese and zinc from brine purification
- Feed
- Purification cake from geothermal lithium brines; manganese fines
- Products
- High-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate, zinc oxide
Direct lithium extraction from geothermal brine first has to remove manganese and zinc. We separate the two from the purification cake as high-purity co-products, turning an impurity stream into battery-material feed. The same route treats manganese fines.
Copper and cobalt tailings
- Feed
- Sulphide tailings, Zambian Copperbelt
- Products
- Copper, cobalt
A century of mining on the Copperbelt left sulphide tailings carrying copper and cobalt. Earlier retreatment, such as the tailings leach plant at Chingola, focused on copper oxides alone. The chloride process suits the sulphide tailings and can run on site.
Have a feed that fits one of these routes, or none of them?
Testwork is the first stage of every Engineering Package. Tell us what you have and what you already know about it.