Passivation is a common phenomenon on the surface of chalcopyrite in the process of bioleaching. The ordinary leaching and strengthening leaching by adding glass beads were carried out. The results show that the passivation of chalcopyrite was greatly weakened in strengthening leaching due to the change of leaching conditions. The copper leaching efficiency was increased from 50% to 89.8% through adding beads. The SEM and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses illustrate that there are few jarosite precipitates and weak passivation on the surface of chalcopyrite in strengthening leaching. In contrast, there are thick and compact jarosite precipitate and obvious passivation in ordinary leaching, which hinders further dissolution of chalcopyrite.
The microscopy and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) were used to study the gold occurrence of Jiaojia gold mine, Shandong province. The results show that the gold-bearing minerals are composed of pyrite, chalcopyrite, gangue, sphalerite and galena. 77.12% of gold minerals are the sulphides and 22.88% are the gangues. The gold occurrence is composed of 60.28% fissure gold, 21.63% inclusion gold and 18.09% crystal fractured gold. The morphology of gold mineral is composed of sphere, triangle, rectangle, strip and erose. The Jiaojia gold mineral owns large grain size range from 3-5 μm to 100 μm. 1.5% of gold grains is more than 0.104 mm, 5.26% is 0.074-0.104 mm, 23.31% is 0.043-0.074 mm, 3.76% is 0.043-0.037 mm and 64.29% is less than 0.037 mm. The occurrence of gold mineral is composed of native gold, electrum, native silver, iron-bearing native silver, goldcuprid and acanthite. Electrum is the most important mineral, accounting for 71.56%. The average quality is 641.26‰ for gold and silver mineral.