Aker Kvaerner has been awarded a contract by MBS, a research, design and build company based in Sofia, Bulgaria, to design a pilot plant for copper cathodes.

The new plant will use a novel, environmentally clean technology for the production of copper cathodes from tailings. The design work commences immediately and is scheduled to take approximately six months.

MBS has developed a new process for the recovery of copper from concentrator tailings. To demonstrate the process, MBS will build a pilot plant, which will process tailings to produce cathode copper using their novel leaching process followed by solvent extraction and electro-winning (SX/EW). This will not only be the first demonstration of the MBS leaching process at scale, but it will also be the first copper SX/EW plant to operate in Bulgaria.

"With more than thirty years experience in the hydrometallurgical recovery of copper using the environmentally clean SX/EW technology, we are a world leader in this area of plant design. Our expertise includes many in-house developments in SX contractor design, mixer design and plant arrangements, so we look forward to working with MBS on this SX/EW pilot plant design," said Malcolm Oliver, President of AK Engineering Services, part of Aker Kvaerner's European engineering and construction business.

The pilot plant is the pre-cursor to a full size pilot plant, which is scheduled to be built in 2004/5.