In early-1995, the Bindura Nickel Corporation commissioned a pressure
leach plant at its Smelter and Refinery complex located in Bindura,
Zimbabwe. The novel pressure leach process was developed by Sherritt
to treat the nickel-copper sulphide residue produced from the original
atmospheric leach circuit. The process extracts essentially all the nickel
from the nickel-copper sulphide residue under non-oxidising acid pressure
leach conditions, thereby producing an upgraded copper sulphide residue
suitable for smelting and refining to electrolytic copper. The commissioning of the pressure leach plant was relatively
smooth and design conditions were achieved within six weeks of
operation. This paper presents a brief description of the process
development and the plant design, followed by highlights of the
plant start-up activities and summary of the plant performance.