Study on the mechanism of improving the penetrability of the high-clay ore heaps

When the dissolution of the leach solution is a constant, the effect of the leach solution filtering in the ore heap is the determinative factor to the efficiency of the heap leaching, which is more notable to the high-clay ore heaps. Because of high content of clay mineral, the penetrability of the.high-clay ore heaps is very low, which leads to the very low efficiency of the heap leaching. In order to get the aim mineral efficiently, the penetrability of the ore heap has to be improved. This paper comes to the conclusion that improving the penetrability could start with six aspects by studying the reasons which cause the low penetrability and studying the mechanism of improving it. Then classify the present ways of how to improve it and compare each other by combined the six aspects. With these, the paper finds that in-heap solution distribution is the best way to improve the penetrability and using two or more ways at the same time would raise the efficiency of the heap leaching much more. 4figs. ,1tab. ,12refs.