Vanadium (II) Sulfate for the Reductive Leaching of Chalcopyrite: Replacing Smelting with Electrolysis for Copper Production

The demand for copper is expected to outpace supply in the coming decades due in part to the emergence of wind and solar technologies, which require about five times as much copper as traditional energy sources. This work introduces a potentially transformative hydrometallurgical process to extract copper from chalcopyrite, and thereby sustain a high rate of copper production throughout the 21st century. Chalcopyrite is reacted with vanadium (II) sulfate for the first time to enable the rapid, clean, and complete recovery of copper. Reactions between 39 g/L copper concentrate, 1 M vanadium (II) sulfate, and various concentrations of sulfuric acid yielded a final product of solid copper sulfate, which was characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy‐energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (SEM‐EDS) analysis. The solid products were leached in a subsequent step to demonstrate copper yields ranging from 95–99 %. The vanadium (II) ion may be regenerated by an electrolysis unit that leverages advances in vanadium flow battery technologies. Replace smelting with electrolysis: V2+ ion is electrochemically generated by leveraging advances in vanadium redox flow battery technologies. The V2+ ion is subsequently used to reduce chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) to metallic copper (Cu0) for its sustainable production.