Bioleaching of Complex Sulfides Concentrate and Correlation of Leaching Parameters Using Multivariate Data Analysis Technique

Abstract

Bacterial leaching was applied to recover metal values from complex sulfide concentrates. The leaching kinetics were observed to depend on various leaching parameters, including Fe(II) concentration, pH and pulp density. The rate of leaching decreased with increase of iron precipitation rate. The leaching results indicated good bacterial activity. A Principle Component Analysis showed all the variables can be classified into four groups which account for more than 79.7% of the variance. The four groups were described as factors like leaching kinetics, bacterial activity, leaching parameters and bacterial metabolites.