Pomalaa limonite nickel ore has nickel content of 1.29% and it has not been processed in Indonesia until now. In addition, The Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Regulation No. 5/2017 on adding the value of minerals. Therefore, the limonite nickel ore should be processed to produce nickel metal with the content 99.93%. The limonite nickel ore generally has low nickel content (less than 1.5%) therefore hydrometallurgy such as leaching is the suitable process. In this research is done 2 series of leaching. First, determination of leaching controlling rate by varying the temperature and time of leaching. Second, determination the optimum condition of the leaching variables (concentration of leaching agent, agitation and temperature) based on the leaching controlling rate. The amount of activation energy obtained from this research is 16.23 and 38.47 kcal/mol then it could be said that the reaction control of leaching limonite nickel ore from Pomalaa is a chemical reaction. In addition, a maximum extraction of 88.9% was achieved at 400 rpm, 6M hydrochloric acid concentration and a temperature of leaching about 90 degrees C.
