Boleo Copper Zinc Cobalt Project

Boleo Copper Zinc Cobalt Project – Mintrex was requested to provide commissioning assistance for the Boleo cobalt electrowinning plant, based on the expertise of one of its team members (David White) in cobalt and nickel refining, particularly anode bag electrowinning.

The Boleo Copper Zinc Cobalt Project is located near the town of Santa Rosalia, on the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico. Copper production commenced in 2015, with cobalt electrowinning start-up in March 2016.

Assistance was initially provided from Perth, in the form of a design review and provision of technical data on request. On-site assistance in March 2016 was followed by a visit report in April 2016 containing a number of key recommendations around impurity removal and installation details.

Boleo’s production manager Tom Gamarano commented on receipt of the report:

“Thank you very much for all of your valuable help David. I especially appreciate the idea of addition of some LIX 84 in the CoSX circuit for copper removal; we will begin lab testing soon. We are now modifying the anolyte discharge header tube spacing to match the anode spacing and putting into service the IX column split elution. We’ll continue to review the other recommendations included.”