Effect of copper slag recovery on hydrometallurgical cut-off grades considering environmental aspects

Determining the hydrometallurgical cut-off grades specifies the destination of low grade materials and this is subjected to more benefits in mining. Copper production rate is considered as one of the fundamental issues in hydrometallurgical cut-off grades determination. Slags are remarked as one of the main sources of copper. It is not only regarded as a waste but also identified as another resource extracting base metals. Slags are characterized by copper high grade. Thus, slag copper recovery can be led to different cut-off grades and net present value (NPV). The current research scrutinizes the effect of slag recovery by both flotation and hydrometallurgical methods on the hydrometallurgical cut-off grades. For this purpose, the optimum cut-off grade algorithms of hydrometallurgical methods are developed by considering associated environmental parameters, incomes and also the costs. Then, their optimum amounts are calculated with NPV maximization as an objective function. The results indicate that considering slag copper recovery in the hydrometallurgical cut-off grade algorithms reduces the environmental costs caused by slag dumping and leads to more NPV by 9%.