Determination of Mineral Composition of Copper Ores by X-Ray Methods

One of the most complicated tasks of analytical control of copper ores is determination of mineral forms of copper. Currently, this is aided by iodometric and atomic absorption methods with preliminary leaching of various mineral forms, characterized by complicated sample preparation and very time-consuming analysis. The most universal method of determination of mineral composition of solid samples is X-ray diffraction analysis; however, significant variations of phase composition of copper ores, overlapping reflections of various phases, and existence of amorphous phase and structural defects necessitate the development of specialized approaches. In this work, the existence of amorphous phase is taken into account by direct calculation of weight fractions of crystalline phases by the G factor method. It is proposed to determine the total copper content by the X-ray fluorescence method. Methodological approaches have been developed based only on X-ray methods, excluding leaching and dissolution of samples, and making it possible to detect primary and secondary copper sulfides by calibrating characteristics (3 min), as well as complete phase composition at the stage of routine analysis (10–15 min) and for research purposes (15–20 min).