Effect of Marmatite on Bioleaching Behaviors of Chalcopyrite

Bioleaching experiments were used in this experiment to study the interaction between marmatite and chalcopyrite. In the sterile system, the copper extraction rate of single chalcopyrite was only 20%, much lower than the copper extraction rate of L. ferriphilum system, which is 95%. The addition of L. ferriphilum can improve the copper extraction rate to a substantial level. In both the sterile and L. ferriphilum system, the single chalcopyrite got a higher copper extraction rate than the mixture minerals of chalcopyrite and marmatite, and with the increase of marmatite, the copper extraction rate decreased. So marmatite may inhibit the dissolution of chalcopyrite. The reason may be that the redox potential of mixture mineral was not in the optimum range.