Study of Water Movement in Unsaturated Copper Ore

Leaching is widely applied in the exploitation of depleted ores. In order to discover the law of leachant movement in the leaching process and calculating volumes and time intervals of spraying leachant, experiments and numerical simulation with the TOUGH2/EOS3 module were carried out in order to find out the principle of water movement in unsaturated copper ore. The results show that water volume increases at the same location over time, that copper ore tends to become saturated and that liquid velocity decreases at the same time as the distance from top increases. On the other hand, a comparison and analysis of our experimental and simulated results indicate that the EOS3 module could accurately simulate the water movement in an unsaturated state.