Zaldívar Mine, owned by Antofagasta Minerals, is located 175 kilometers southeast of the city of Antofagasta in the Antofagasta Region, 1,400 kilometers north of the country’s capital, Santiago de Chile. The deposit is located at an average altitude of 3,300 meters above sea level. The mining system used at the Zaldivar deposit is open pit.

Currently, the operation is facing a significant change in mineralogy, characterized by a greater presence of primary and secondary sulfides, whose leaching has not yet been fully studied. As a result, recovery levels in the leaching piles are not as expected. Given this scenario, the company seeks to implement concrete actions to reverse this trend and strengthen its commitment to continuous process improvement.

At Zaldívar, after the ore comminution process, brine and acid are added before being deposited in the dynamic heap leach stack with 106 piles and 8 hoses in each pile. The wetting process lasts approximately 7 days, followed by resting and then continuous irrigation, where it is irrigated with IPLS and then refined or mixed. The cycle lasts approximately 220 days.

Potential pilot tests have been carried out and evaluated in the HL pile with different types of solutions: initiatives that increase oxygen in heaps, solutions to regenerate Fe³⁺, directly increase ferric concentration through additives, providing a stronger oxidant from the outset and faster recovery of secondary sulfides, and initiatives to keep the heap porous and stable, ensuring uniform solution flow and efficient contact with copper minerals.

Pilot testing:

• Blowers, nanobubbles, peroxyacids, ferric addition, circuit isolation, fines management, pile washing, hydraulic pile improvement, among others.

Proven solutions from other mining companies are sought to increase copper recovery in leach piles by improving the extraction and kinetics of chlorinated leaching, allowing primary and secondary sulfides to be leached.

Solutions for heap leach piles (635 m x 2000 m) containing primary and secondary sulfides with a 220-day cycle, where the first 100 days are irrigated with IPLS and then with refining or mixed. The solution must be capable of continuously measuring critical variables that limit recovery and also integrate with our irrigation management system to measure changes in recovery.

Companies, startups, institutes, universities, research centers, and other legally established entities in accordance with the laws of their country of origin are eligible to apply. Natural persons (individual applicants) are excluded from this call.

We extend this invitation to foster collaboration and leverage technological and/or business capabilities among companies, entrepreneurs, and other entities. For teams or consortia, the lead institution must be clearly identified in the application.

Consulting, advisory services, and engineering studies

The proposed solution must meet the following requirements:

• Mature solutions, tested in a mining environment, TLR ≥7.
• Solution that guarantees a verifiable increase in recovery points in the HL pile.
• Pilot implementation deadlines must be less than one year.
• The solution must ensure that it poses no risk to people, equipment, or the environment.
• The technological solution must be scalable.
• SCADA, Datalake, or similar integration.
• It is desirable that the technological solution be autonomous, requiring no personnel intervention during operation, and that it also be versatile, demonstrating robustness and adaptability to different conditions typical of mining operations (wind, solar radiation, dust, acidic pH, limited connectivity).