Demonstrably Versatile
Leaching minerals in a concentrated halide environment is like ‘smashing a walnut with a sledgehammer’. Most metal chlorides are highly soluble as halide complexes in an excess of halide ions. This applies even to metals like silver and lead, which are insoluble at low halide concentration.
As such, it is easy enough to extract a broad range of elements into solution in the Halion Loop™ system: copper, nickel, cobalt, lead, zinc, silver, gold, PGMs and rare earths have all been proven. Other elements are theoretically possible, but would be considered on a case-by-case project basis: manganese, tin, antimony, scandium, yttrium, bismuth, uranium, thorium, gallium and germanium are all on this list, and more.
Once mobilised into solution, Loop Hydrometallurgy has a ‘library’ of existing methods to recover those metals in a variety of chosen forms: high purity metal; low purity metal & sponge; oxides and hydroxides; chlorides and sulphates; even sulphides are possible if preferred for project purposes.
The recovery of co-product and by-product metals is subject to a broad range of project factors, notably including the local markets for selected product options. Iron (as hematite): elemental sulphur, selenium and tellurium are all project-specific options.