Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858

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Minerals Engineering
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The use of seawater as process water at Las Luces coppermolybdenum

beneciation plant in Taltal (Chile)
Patricio A. Moreno a,, Hal Aral b,c, Jacqueline Cuevas d, Andrs Monardes e, Marcelo Adaro e, Terry Norgate b,c,
Warren Bruckard b
a
Diego Portales University, Ejrcito 441, Santiago, Chile
b
CSIRO Process Science and Engineering, Box 312 Clayton South, Victoria 3169, Australia
c
Minerals Down Under National Flagship, CSIRO, Australia
d
Centro de Investigacin Cientco Tecnolgico para la Minera (CICITEM) Avda. Jos Miguel Carrera N. 1701; 4to piso, Antofagasta, Chile
e
Las Cenizas Mining Group, Calle Coronel 2354, Providencia, Santiago, Chile

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Las Luces is a coppermolybdenum beneciation plant in Taltal (Chile), owned by the Las Cenizas Mining
Received 4 January 2011 Group (Grupo Minero Las Cenizas) of Chile. The plant comprised of conventional crushing, grinding and
Accepted 15 March 2011 otation facilities. Las Luces has treated 720,000 tpa ore since 1995. This ore was supplied from Las
Available online 8 April 2011
Cenizas own underground mines operating in the area.
Seawater is brought to the plant from a distance of 7 km and pumped to an altitude of 178 m. In the Las
Keywords: Luces plant, seawater is mixed with tailings dam water in the Industrial Storage Pond. The mixed water is
Process water
used in the grinding and otation circuits. The Las Luces beneciation plant has been successfully using
Seawater
Saline water
seawater for over 15 years through a clever water recirculation scheme. The Las Luces plant is unusual in
Copper otation the sense that it has operated during this time without the use of any fresh water.
Milling Analytical data show that the dissolved salt content of the process water has increased from 36.0 g/L to
Tailings water reuse 46.4 g/L or 0.7 g/L/year. Calculations suggest that this increase is largely due to solar evaporation where
Water recycle the evaporation rate reaches 50 m3/hectare/day.
In Las Luces, the evaporation related water losses amount to 237 megalitres/year or a loss of approxi-
mately 69 days of seawater pumping to the Industrial Storage Pond. Based on this nding Las Cenizas is
now investigating options to minimise the loss of water to evaporation.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction andesites or broadly contemporaneous gabbro to granodiorite

The Las Cenizas copper mines, owned by the Grupo Minero Las
Cenizas S.A., has two mining and mineral processing operations in
northern and central Chile: Taltal and Cabildo, respectively. In
Taltal, the mining group operates ve underground copper mines,
namely Las Luces, Altamira, Tropezn, Doa Elba and Filomena
(Fig. 1). The Cabildo deposits are located in the Fifth Region of
Valparaso, 165 km north of Santiago. Doa Elba and Filomena
mines are 35 km South East from Taltal city. Tropezn, Las Luces,
Altamira mines are located 46, 55 and 110 km South East from
Taltal city, respectively. The ore types, reserves and grades of Las
Cenizas mines are shown in Table 1.
The copper, molybdenum, silver and gold deposits of the region
were formed during Late JurassicEarly Cretaceous age and are
part of a 1000-km-long belt parallel to the Pacic coast (Sillitoe
and Perell, 2005). These deposits are usually hosted by sub-aerial
Corresponding author. Tel.: +56 2 676 2415; fax: +56 2 676 2402.
E-mail address: patricio.moreno@mail.udp.cl (P.A. Moreno).
intrusions formed during the early stages of the Andean magmatic
arc formation (Sillitoe and Perell, 2005). This intrusion crosscuts
the dominant granodiorite and monzogranite of the Cerro del
Pingo Plutonic Complex.
The mineralisation in the region is strongly associated with a
pervasive and zoned potassic(calcic) alteration. For example, the
bulk of the CuMo(Au) mineralisation at Tropezn is related to
the CaFeK alteration zone and includes chalcopyrite, molybde-
nite, bornite, and gold (Tornos et al., 2010).
Process water scarcity is a particular concern in places like
northern Chile where underground water reserves are negligible
or non-existent. Existing reserves are not replenished due to the
lack of rain. The only water available to Las Luces is seawater.
In this paper a brief introduction to the unit operations
employed in the Las Luces beneciation plant is given. More
importantly, the ow rates and chemical analyses of the water
samples collected from main unit operations at the plant are pre-
sented and the variations in the chemistry of the recycled seawater
as a result of grinding and otation are discussed.

0892-6875/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2011.03.009
 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858 853

Fig. 1. Location map for Las Cenizas mines: Las Luces, Doa Elba, Tropezn, Filomena and Altamira in the vicinity of Taltal (Regin II) with respect to a partial map of Chile.

Table 1
Ore types, reserves and grades of Las Cenizas mines near Taltal city.

Mine Mining type Reserves Grade Mineralisation

Tropezn 46 km SE Underground stope and pillar 1 Mt sulphide ore Hypogene ore 1% Cu in the upper zone and 0.13% Mo CuMo(Au)
from Taltal; method 0.5 Mt copper oxides in the lower parts; present study: Cu = 5.77%; chalcopyrite
1250 m altitude Mo = 0.54%; Ag = 5 g/t
Las Luces 56 km 2500 t/d underground sublevel 7 Mt Present study: Cu = 1.37%; Mo = 21 g/t; Ag = 4 g/t Chalcocite, bornite,
south of Taltal; open stoping operation at and chalcopyrite
184 m altitude 600 m depth
Doa Elba 35 km SE Underground stope and pillar 3.99 Mt 1.26% CuS Cu = 1.26%; Ag = 10 g/t Chalcocite and bornite
from Taltal; 850 m method
altitude
Altamira 110 km SE Underground Sublevel Open 2.5 Mt sulphide ore at Present study: Cu = 1.07%; Mo = 8 g/t; Ag = 14 g/t Chalcocite, bornite,
from Taltal; Stoping; Av. ore prod. rate 1.7% Cu; 9.0 Mt at molybdenite and
1250 m altitude 12,000 t/y 1.25% Cu copper oxides
Filomena 35 km from Open pit 1.45 Mt copper oxides Average grade 0.95% Cu Atacamite, chrysocolla
Taltal; 1200 m and malachite
altitude

2. Ore treatment
The Las Cenizas ores are treated in the Las Luces beneciation
plant, located 45 km South East from Taltal. This plant comprises
crushing, milling and otation unit operations. A variety of ores
is supplied to the Las Luces beneciation plant from the neighbour-
ing Las Cenizas mines at a rate of 60,000 metric tonnes/month. Ore
grades and recoveries by ore type are listed in Table 2. The
Altamira ore contains signicant silver values, 31 g/t, and the silver
recovery is around 81%. Over 50% of the ore treated at the plant site
is from the Las Luces mineral deposit, which gives its name to the
plant. The chemistry of the Tropezn ore is distinctly different from
the other ore types as it contains higher amounts of sulphides, cop-
per, molybdenum, magnesium, iron, cobalt, nickel, small amounts
of gold but lower concentrations of Al, Ca, Na and Ti.
The gangue mineralogy of the Tropezn ore is quite different
from the other ore types. The qualitative X-ray diffraction (XRD)
data shown in Table 3 indicates the presence of siderite and talc
as unique gangue minerals and sulphide minerals such as chalco-
pyrite, molybdenite and pyrite. Calcite and hematite are typically
absent in the Tropezn ore. This ore type, with values of 2.5%
copper, and 0.5% molybdenum also has important values of gold
(0.55 g/t), of which 71% is recovered.
The ore received from Las Luces, Altamira and Tropezn, are
stockpiled in different heaps, and treated according to their miner-
alogical characteristics.
2.1. Crushing, grinding and sizing
The ores are subjected to 3-stage crushing and primary grinding
prior to otation.
The comminution circuit is comprised of a primary jaw crusher,
a secondary cone crusher, a double deck screen, two tertiary cone
crushers, and a double deck tertiary screen. The grinding circuit
consists of three parallel lines. The rst and second lines operate
with Kennedy Van Saun ball mills (3.51 m by 4.27 m long), and
the third one with a Hardinge mill (2.74 m by 3.66 m long).
The ground ore is classied by hydrocyclones where the oversize
(coarse cyclone under ow) particles are returned to the mill for
re-grinding (Monardes and Bouso, 2009). The undersize particles
(cyclone overow) are sent to the oatation plant. The ore is
ground to P80 of 147 lm. Each ore has a different hardness, varying
854 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858

Table 2
Head and concentrate grades and recoveries at the Las Luces beneciation plant (Source: Monardes and Bouso, 2009).

Ore Head grade Recovery (%) Concentrate grade

Cu (%) Ag (g/t) Au (g/t) Cu Ag Au Cu (%) Ag (g/t) Au (g/t)
Insoluble Soluble
Altamira 1.25 0.35 31 81 81 44 950
Las Luces 1.10 6 91 60 51 150
Tropezn 2.50 5 0.55 90 62 71 27 45 5.5
Doa Elba 1.35 0.20 8.5 83 65 46 181

Table 3
Mineral phase analysis (XRD) of three major ore types for the Las Luces beneciation plant.

Mineral Formula Altamira ore Las Luces ore Tropezn ore

p p p
Albite Na(AlSi3O8)
p
Ankerite Ca(Fe+2,Mg)(CO3)2
p p
Calcite, syn CaCO3
p p p
Quartz, syn SiO2
p
Chalcopyrite FeCuS2
p p p
Clinochlore-1MIIb (Mg,Fe)6(Si,Al)4O10(OH)8
p
Edenite NaCa2Mg5AlSi7O22(OH)2
p p
Hematite Fe2O3
p
Illite-2M1 (NR) (K,H3O)Al2Si3AlO10(OH)2
p p
Magnetite Fe3O4
p
Molybdenite-2H MoS2
p
Muscovite-2M1 or 2M2 (K0.82Na0.18)(Fe0.03Al1.97)(AlSi3) O10(OH)2
p
Pyrite, syn FeS1.74
p
Siderite FeCO3
p
Talc Mg3Si4O10(OH)2

in Bond work index from 11 to 21 kW h/t. Oxide and sulphide ores
are stockpiled and treated separately. The general process ow
sheet of the Las Luces plant is shown in Fig. 2.
2.2. Flotation
consist of two separate lines: the rst concentrates for the rst
two milling-otation lines and a second for the third line. The nal
product is thickened to 55% solids and then ltered. Filter cake
average moisture is under 10%. Concentrates are primarily treated
at the Paipote smelter.

The otation circuit is comprised of 32 sulphide otation cells
for Las Luces ore, 12 cells for Altamira oxides, thickeners and two
lter presses. The otation plant has a rated capacity of 65,000 tons
per month. The otation in the rst two milling lines is carried out
in Outotec cells and the third one uses Denver cells. The circuit is
conventional consisting of traditional roughing, cleaning and scav-
enging operations.
The target Cu grade is 30% Cu and that for the Mo concentrate
45% Mo (with less than 3% Cu). The Ag in the concentrate varies
with ore type but can range from 751200 g/t Ag.
The otation feed in terms of copper minerals is mostly chalco-
pyrite and chalcocite, with molybdenum mostly as molybdenite.
The otation reagent suite varies with ore type but in general
the collectors used are sodium isobutyl xanthate (SIBX), AP 404,
AP 3477 and MX 7013. The frother used includes methyl isobuthyl
carbinol (MIBC), Dow frother 250 and Dow frother 400. Diesel
(40 g/t) is added as a molybdenite promoter.
Recoveries and grades of the copper concentrate obtained vary
according to the origin of the mineral (see Table 3). When high
chalcocite ores are being processed, there are sometimes issues
with soluble copper and copper recoveries are lower, typically
7278% compared with more normal recoveries of 8290%. On
average the Cu recovery is about 84%.
The CuMo concentrates are treated in the molybdenum plant
to separate the Cu and Mo, using conventional sodium hydrogen
sulphide (NaHS) treatment and multiple cleaning stages. The Mo
recovery in the Mo plant is about 52%.
Concentrates from the cleaning steps are sent to the nal stage
of solidliquid separation by thickeners and lter presses, which
2.3. Oxide plant
The copper oxide ores are leached in at the Oxide Plant located
50 km southeast from Taltal city. This plant has recently started
production to produce 5000 t/year of copper with a processing
capacity of 50,000 t/year of ore. The copper oxide ore is supplied
from the altered zones of Las Luces, Altamira, Doa Elba and
Filomena mines. In the Oxide Plant, the ore is crushed in closed cir-
cuit to a nominal size and agglomerated. In the Agglomeration
Plant, seawater and sulphuric acid are used to give the physical
chemical and moisture conditions required for the next stage of
the process, which is leaching with dilute sulphuric acid.
The leaching process is designed for 2.53.0 m high heaps at 20
to 60 day cycles. The leach solution is treated by solvent extraction
and converted to metallic copper by electrowinning.
The seawater is used in agglomeration, leaching and converted
to higher purity water by reverse osmosis (RO). Seawater is
pumped to a collection pond in the Oxide Plant at a 44 km distance
through a pipeline. The RO water is used for the electrowinning
plant as this treatment needs high purity water. In electrowinning
the high purity water is used in washing the cathodes to remove
sulphation products. Some of this water is also used for human
consumption.
3. The use of seawater in Las Luces beneciation plant
Las Luces underground mine development in northern Chile be-
gan in 1994 and production started in 1995 with the construction
 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858 855

Fig. 2. The owsheet of Las Luces beneciation plant and water sampling points.

of the beneciation plant and ancillary works in Las Luces. The In the Las Luces plant, seawater is drawn at a rate of or approx-
plant has used seawater as process water since 1995. imately 44 L/s for 18 h per day from Punta Garcia beach near
856 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858

Taltal. Fig. 3 shows schematically the steps of pumping seawater to Table 4

the concentration plant in Las Luces. The rst pumping from the Daily volumes (m3/d) of water used in each unit operation.

sea surface to the second pumping station covers a distance of Flows heet line No. Description m3/day
1425 m. The second pumping covering 3090 m and the third and (Fig. 2)
nal pumping to the receiving tank of seawater into the concentra- 1 Plant feed 56
tor plant, covering 2450 m, represents a total pipeline length of 2 Material handling 175
6965 m. The pipes are made out of high-density polypropylene 3 Material handling 175
4 Storing line No. 1 75
(HDPE) of 250 mm inner and 280 mm outer diameter (Monardes 5 Storing line No. 2 75
and Bouso, 2009). To minimise the entry of solids into the pumps, 6 Storing line No. 3 24
the pumps suck the water from a 43 m3 sump. These pumps work 7 Grinding line No. 1 75
in series and pump the seawater to the concentrator plant at alti- 8 Grinding line No. 2 75
9 Grinding line No. 3 24
tude of 178.1 m.
10 Collective otation line No. 1 2719
The KSB Megachem pumps are made of stainless steel internals 11 Collective otation line No. 2 2687
to withstand the high corrosion generated by the seawater. The 12 Collective otation line No 3 864
seawater suction pump and the pump in rst pumping station 13 Concentrate. line No. 1 90
are type 80/200 and are driven by a 37 kW motor, while those in- 14 Concentrate. line No 2 74
15 Concentrate. line No. 3 37
stalled in the second and third pumping stations are 65/200 type,
16 Feed lter plant 37
each driven by a 90 kW motor (Monardes and Bouso, 2009). 18 Concentrate lines 1, 2 & 3 5
At the Las Luces plant, seawater is stored in a high density poly- 20 Thickener 1 overow 164
ethylene lined 2200 m3 capacity pond. The seawater, from the 22 Filtered water 1 31
24 Recycled process water 194
Storage Pond is used in a variety of places (see Lines 25, 26, 44
25 Seal water 134
in Fig. 2) and some (an average of 3.62 m3/day) is lost to evapora- 26 Road irrigation water 30
tion. This water, mixed with wastewater from the tailings dam, is 27 Plant process water 6250
used in crushing, grinding and otation operations in the plant. 28 Grinding feed water line No. 1 2644
The rest of the seawater (see Line 41 in Fig. 2) overows to the 29 Grinding feed water line No. 2 2612
30 Grinding feed water line No. 3 839
4000 m3 capacity Industrial Water Storage Pond at an average rate
31 Flotation feed water line No. 1 47
of 2384 m3/day. The volume of water used in each unit operation is 32 Flotation feed water line No. 2 49
shown in Table 4. The daily intake of seawater to the plant is 33 Flotation feed water line No. 3 60
2859 m3/day. Of this water 134 m3/day is used as seal water (Line 34 Flotation tailings line No. 1 2677
35 Flotation tailings line No. 2 2662
25), 299 m3/day as a dust suppressant for crushers (Line 44), and
36 Flotation tailings line No. 3 887
30 m3/day as road irrigation water (Line 26). 37 Tailings dam feed 6250
The wastewater generated in the plant is stored in a tailings 38 Tailings dam total losses 2566
dam which covers 130,062 m2 (or 13 ha) and has a water storage 39 Recycled water from tailing dam 3684
capacity of approximately 190,000 m3. The recovery of surface 40 Ind. water stage. pond losses 12
41 Seawater overow to industrial water pond 2384
water from the tailings dam is achieved via a 2.5 m diameter col-
42 Seawater storage pond losses 12
lection pond. This pond is interconnected by a pipe, located below 43 Seawater from sea uptake 2859
the oor level of the dam, to the Industrial Storage Pond. 44 Water used for dust suppress. 299
The daily water balances for the water holding ponds are shown 45 Tailings pumping station losses 110
in Table 5.
The storage pond supplies process water to 3 grinding mills at
an average rate of 6250 m3/day via Line 27 in Fig. 2. This water is pumped to the Storage Pond at an average rate of 3684 m3/day
used in grinding and otation circuits and recycled back to the tail- (Line 39) and mixed there with seawater at a rate of 2384 m3/day
ings dam. In the tailings dam on average 650 m3/day of the re- (Line 41). It is estimated that on average 2565 m3/day water is lost
ceived water is lost to evaporation each month. The overall to evaporation, accidental overows, spills, and pulp impregnation
evaporation losses are 660.5 m3/day when evaporation from other in Line 38. The evaporation rate at the mill site is on average
ponds (Industrial Storage and Seawater Storage ponds) is taken around 50 m3/hectare/day. The high evaporation rate is due to
into account. The wastewater comes to the tailings dam in a slurry the fact that the operation is located in an extremely arid area.
form and is dewatered by set of cyclones. The slurry containing ne The Taltal region is known to have a mean precipitation (rain
and coarse gangue minerals is discharged into the Dam at an aver- and snow) of only 6.7 mm/year (Environmental impact statement,
age rate of 6250 m3/day via Line 37. From the Dam, clear water is 2007).

Storage Pond
Elev: 178.1 m
Dist: 6,990 m
Pump Station 2
Elev: 95.2 m
Dist: 4,540 m

Pump Station 1
Elev: 15.7 m
Sea Water Dist: 1,450 m
uptake
Elev: 0 m
Dist: 0 m

Fig. 3. Seawater uptake to the Las Luces process plant.

 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858 857

Table 5 shown in Table 6. The variation of 0.9% in the composition of sea-

Water usage (in various parts of the plant) and its balance in the Las Luces water between the intake and outlet points is related to sampling
beneciation plant in June 2009.
and analytical errors.
IN OUT In the Las Luces plant, the grinding and otation cells are fed
Seawater circuit Volume IN Seawater circuit Volume OUT from the Industrial Storage Pond which contains 46.4 g/L total dis-
Line No. (kL/d) Line No (kL/d) solved salt. This indicates that the total dissolved salt content of
43 2859 42 12 seawater has increased by about 10.4 g/L as a result of continuous
26 30 seawater recycling during last 15 years. This amount, on average,
44 299 represents an approximately 0.73 g/L increase per year assuming
41 2384
plant operation conditions remained unchanged throughout this
25 134
time.
SUM (IN) 2859 SUM (OUT) 2859
The increase as a result of solar evaporation can be estimated
Industrial Storage Volume IN Volume OUT from a dissolved salt mass balance calculation on seawater based
Pond (kL/d) (kL/d)
on the data given in Table 7:
39 3684 40 12
41 2384 27 6250 SW v olIN  SW cIN SW v olIN  Ev apSW cOUT 1
24 194
SUM (IN) 6262 SUM (OUT) 6262 or
Tailings Pumping Volume IN Tailings Pumping Volume OUT
Station (kL/d) Station (kL/d) SW v olIN SW cIN
SW cOUT 2
25 134 37 6250 SW v olIN  Ev ap
34 2677 45 110
35 2662 where SW = seawater; vol = volume and c = concentration
36 887
m 3
SUM (IN) 6360 SUM (OUT) 6360 g 2859 day g
Tailings dam Volume IN Tailings dam Volume OUT
36:04    46:9 3
L 2859 m3  660:52 m3 L
(kL/d) (kL/d) day day

37 6250 38 2566
39 3684 This value will remain the same in any time period as long as the
SUM (IN) 6250 SUM (OUT) 6250
seawater intake volume and evaporation rate remain unchanged.
The calculated total dissolved salt value, 46.9 g/L, is very close
to the measured value (46.4 g/L) in the Industrial Storage Pond.
This indicates the increase in the total salt content in time is largely
Table 6 the result of evaporation.
ICP analysis (g/L) of seawater and Storage Pond exit water samples.

Sample Na K Ca Mg Cl SO4 SUM

5. Combating corrosion in Las Luces
Line 27 13.3 0.4 1.4 1.79 24.6 4.88 46.37
Line 43 Seawater 11.1 0.38 0.39 1.38 19.8 2.83 35.88 In Las Luces, all the facilities are permanently exposed to the
Seawater Taltal 11.4 0.38 0.39 1.39 19.8 2.84 36.20
corrosive action of salt water. The damage on the metal surfaces
is minimised by taking the following precautions:

Table 5 summarises the water recycling at the Las Luces plant.

The amount of water coming to the Industrial Storage Pond
(6262 m3/day) is the same as the amount of water leaving the
Pond. Similarly, the water, coming in and going out, balances well
for tailings dam and tailings dam pump station.
4. Variation in the salt content over time
The variation of the major elemental content of the seawater
was investigated using two seawater samples, one from Taltal
beach and the other from the seawater Pond at the mill site, and
exit water from Industrial Storage Pond (Line 27). The water anal-
yses were performed by using atomic absorption, titration (for Cl)
and gravimetric (for SO4) methods. The chemical analyses are
(a) The effects of corrosion on the surface of steel plates is min-
imised by painting, applying vulcanized rubber coating and
spray coating with polyurethane.
(b) The pipes and pipe components used in concentrator plant
are rubber-coated steel or made out of high density polyeth-
ylene. All the valves and pumps are made out of A 743 or A
316 type stainless steel. Experience shows that A 304 stain-
less steel is not suitable.
(c) Intake and seawater pumping stations are cleaned every
90 days to avoid fungi and barnacle growth, which can result
in pipe blockage.
(d) The pumps are inspected every 4000 h. The impellers of the
pumps are changed every six months and the pumps every
year.

Table 7
Calculated evaporation loss from major ponds based on mean daily evaporation rate of 0.05 m3/m2/day.

Volume (m3) Area (m2) Evaporation loss (m3/day) Evaporation contribution (%)
Tailing dam 190,000 130,062 650.3 98.45%
Industrial pond 4000 1,317 6.6 1.00%
Seawater pond 2,200 724 3.6 0.55%
Tailings pump station negligible negligible
Total 196,200 132,103 660.5 100.00%
858 P.A. Moreno et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 852858
The money spent for the maintenance of metal surfaces and
replacement of pumps is an important part of the operating costs
in the Las Luces plant relating to the use of seawater.
There are of course a number of advantages and disadvantages
in using seawater exclusively at the mine. For example, there is no
acquisition cost for seawater and it is an inexhaustible natural
resource. In the absence of any fresh water in the close vicinity,
seawater is the only water available for the Las Luces plant. Fur-
thermore, the use of seawater would protect the existing fresh
water reserves stored in subsurface aquifers and glaciers.
Although there is no acquisition cost for seawater, the opera-
tional and capital investment costs of using seawater could be
higher than that of fresh water. This is largely due to the expenses
needed to combat the corrosive effect of seawater, and the con-
struction and maintenance of the pipeline to transport the seawa-
ter to the plant site.
6. Conclusions
The Las Luces plant is a good example of continuous use of sea-
water at a minerals beneciation plant without the need for fresh
water. The operational records show that metallurgical results are
not affected by the salinity of the seawater. The data show that
during last 15 years the increase in the total dissolved solids con-
tent of the process water was small, from approximately 36.0 g/L
(seawater) to 46.4 g/L. The mass balance calculations show that
the 10.4 g/L increase is largely related to the solar evaporation
where the rate reaches 50 m3/hectare/day.
In Las Luces, the annual evaporation related water losses
amount to 237 megalitres or a loss of approximately 69 days of
seawater pumping to the Storage Pond. Based on this nding Las
Cenizas is now investigating options to minimise the loss of water
to evaporation.
The recent lab-scale work of Aral et al., 2010 to compare the
performance of copper rougher otation in distilled water (Spe-
cic Gravity SG = 1.00), seawater (SG = 1.025) and hypersaline
(SG = 1.23) water gave similar copper recoveries for distilled
water and seawater otation, approximately 78%. However, a
signicant deterioration in copper recoveries was observed when
hypersaline water was used. As well the copper grades of con-
centrates from the distilled and seawater were also comparable
(about 20%). Their data suggested that there is probably a total
dissolved salt content limit for the water used in copper
otation.
The option of using seawater for mineral processing instead of
freshwater, promises to be an interesting alternative for exploita-
tion of many mineral deposits not only for Chile and Peru but also
for countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Philippines, New
Guinea, Angola, Namibia, northwest Africa, South Africa and even
for the countries located in semi-arid and temperate climatic zones
in the Northern Hemisphere.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Centre of Energy and Sustainable
Development (CESD) of Diego Portales University (Santiago, Chile)
and Sustainable Processing Theme of CSIROs MDU National Flag-
ship Projects. We acknowledge Prof. Dr Jos Robles Dean of Engi-
neering, Dr. Edmundo Claro, Director of the CESD for providing
funds for the eld trip and sample analysis. We thank Prof. Dr Luis
A. Cisternas of CICITEM for providing access to the chemical anal-
ysis of the liquid samples which were performed at the University
of Antofagasta.
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