Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

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Hydrometallurgy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hydromet

Parameters inuencing the microbial oxidation activity in the industrial bioleaching

heap at Escondida mine, Chile
Pamela E. Soto a,, Pedro A. Galleguillos a, b, Marco A. Sern c, Vctor J. Zepeda a, b,
Cecilia S. Demergasso a, b, Carlos Pinilla d
a

Centro de Biotecnologa Profesor Alberto Ruiz, Universidad Catlica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile
Centro de Investigacin Cientca y Tecnolgica para la Minera (CICITEM), Antofagasta, Chile
Departamento de Ingeniera de Sistemas y Computacin, Universidad Catlica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile
d
Superintendencia Metalurgia Sulphide Leach, Minera Escondida Ltda., BHP Billiton, Chile
b
c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 27 November 2012

Keywords:
Heap bioleaching
Industrial acidophilic community
Chalcocite and chalcopyrite substrates
Iron oxidation and kinetic of copper recovery
Data mining model

a b s t r a c t
The industrial run of mine (ROM) bioleaching heap of Escondida mine is monitored monthly from Pregnant
Leach Solution (PLS) to assess concentration of microorganisms, microbial activity and physicochemical parameters generating a huge amount of information. To obtain a better description of the iron microbial activity and the dissolution rate of sulde ores occurring in the leaching cycle, iterative process based on
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) was used. A data mining technique, called hierarchical clustering, was employed with mineralogical characteristics of the ores loaded in the heap as input. Three different
groups of strips were distinguished by this model. Chalcocite and chalcopyrite contents were the most relevant parameters selected by decision tree technique. The results showed that there was a good coincidence
between the three groups dened and the metallurgical performance in terms of copper recovery.
Moreover, another decision tree analysis was performed including the three mineralogical groups, the gathered data about physicochemical parameters and the microbial community composition and function from
the PLS. The PLS temperature and the MPN were the most relevant factors selected to explain the differences
between the operation of the dened groups of strips. The group with the lowest chalcocite and highest chalcopyrite content, reached the highest PLS temperature and the highest MPN of ferrous iron oxidizing microorganisms and also the fastest kinetics of copper recovery.
The estimated temperature inside the heap following conservatively the available models for heaps loaded
with agglomerated material, together with the sustainable occurrence of a moderate thermophile population
and the conrmation of some chalcopyrite dissolution by analysis of tail allowed us to account the chalcopyrite as a microbial substrate in that industrial scale operation.
Those results conrmed the relationship between the microbial community function and the copper release
and the hypothesis that the substrate availability is an important parameter to describe the microbial activity.
Nevertheless, the model is not yet able to explain the low bacterial growth in the group with the highest chalcocite content that is considered a good microbial substrate. Then it is needed to perform another cycle of the
KDD process to complete the model. This kind of information should be considered in dening models to describe and to predict copper recovery in ROM industrial bioleaching processes.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Escondida mine is located in the Region of Antofagasta, northern
Chile. The ne copper produced by the hydrometallurgy process at
Escondida mine involves heap bioleaching of low-grade copper ores.
This paper was originally presented at the International Biohydrometallurgy Symposium
(IBS), Changsha, China, 1822 September 2011.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +56 55 355622; fax: +56 55 355199.
E-mail addresses: pasoto@ucn.cl (P.E. Soto), pgallegu@ucn.cl (P.A. Galleguillos),
maseron@ucn.cl (M.A. Sern), vzepeda@ucn.cl (V.J. Zepeda), cdemerga@ucn.cl
(C.S. Demergasso), carlos.ca.pinilla@bhpbilliton.com (C. Pinilla).
0304-386X/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hydromet.2012.11.011

The industrial bioleach heap is divided into lifts and strips where
the design of the heap involves building a total of seven lifts. Nowadays, part of the heap is operated with the third lift loaded; however
this study focuses on the data obtained during the operation of the
second lift (20082011). The heap was built with run-of-mine
(ROM) ore characterized as low-grade sulde material. The ROM material is composed of particles with a broad range of sizes, producing a
heterogeneous ore bed in terms of mineralogy, sulde exposure to
leachate and solution permeability (Demergasso et al., 2010). In addition, the ore has been obtained from various sources, either coming
from different deposits of the mine or stockpiled material.

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P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

Industrial leaching solutions are routinely sampled and analyzed in

order to monitor the physical, chemical and biological sub-processes
occurring in every leaching strip. On the other hand, sampling the
ore from ROM heap strips would require drilling a borehole, a process
that presented several logistical challenges (for example, the removal
of the irrigation line) and elevated economical costs. That is why it is
not possible to obtain ore samples at different heap stages to study
the community dynamics and the availability of ore substrate. New innovative sampling methods combined with data analysis techniques
are required to gather information from the industrial scale of those
hard-to-sample heaps in order to obtain a better description of the
biogeochemical sub-processes occurring in the leaching cycle, as
well as to build validated industrial scale models and to identify opportunities for process optimization.
The analysis of the succession of microorganisms together with
changes of the chemical and physical conditions in several strips,
using data mining tools, allowed us to infer the occurrence of changes
in the substrate availability in an industrial heap (Demergasso et al.,
2010) and the consequences of microbial metabolism shifts.
The mineralogical information based on the analysis by scanning
electron microscopes with automated capability to quantify minerals
through elemental analyses of the 18 strips at the second lift of the
industrial heap operating in Escondida mine provided insights on the
relationship between mineral content, the microbial community
composition/function and the metallurgical performance.
Data mining is an automatic (or semi-automatic) approach that
enables the recovery of understandable and useful knowledge (previously unknown) from large data sets (Hernndez Orallo et al., 2004;
Witten and Frank, 2000). The main goal of data mining is to nd
and to describe structural patterns in data, as a tool for helping to explain that data and make predictions from it (Witten and Frank,
2000). Data mining involves statistical methods, articial intelligence
and machine learning to nd patterns within data and is a suitable
tool to interpret large multivariate data sets that would be difcult
to analyze manually. The use of such computational methods is becoming more important in this research eld because our ability to
analyze and understand massive datasets lags far behind our ability
to gather and store the data (Fayyad et al., 1996).

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Bioleaching heap and solution sampling
The Escondida mine is located 170 km southeast of Antofagasta. The
industrial bioleaching heap is being built with run-of-mine (ROM) ore
characterized as low grade sulde material containing in average 0.60%
total copper (TCu), and the following average content of copper sulde
minerals: chalcocite (40%), covellite (10%) and chalcopyrite (50%).

The designed heap dimensions are 2000 m wide by 5000 m long

and it is divided into 40 leaching strips of 125 m by 2000 m. Actually
it consists of three lifts of 18 m and there is no dividing seal between
each lift. Each strip generates its own pregnant leaching solution
(PLS). However, contamination from the adjacent strips is expected,
especially after the second lift, since no physical barriers exist between the leaching strips. PLS samples are always collected at the
bottom of the heap (rst lift); therefore when the heap is operating
with more than one lift, the irrigation solution passes through the
lifts until reaching the bottom of the heap and PLS sampling location.
The heap was designed with only one irrigation solution directed
from the solvent-extraction plant that feeds the ore leaching strips.
Forced aeration is supplied through blowers located at the base of
the heap. Each leaching strip has its own individual irrigation and
forced aeration system. Fig. 1 represents the heap design described
above considering three lifts and eight strips.
The start of irrigation of each strip was staggered by approximately
one month, beginning with strip 1. The nomenclature used to refer to
each strip at a different lift is a number of three digits where the rst
digit represents heap's lift and the next two digits represent the strip
number. This analysis was performed with PLS samples collected
monthly between September 2008 and November 2011 from the
rst eighteen strips of the second lift (201218).

2.2. Mineralogy
The information about the initial mineralogy of the resources piled
in each strip of the second lift of the heap (18 strips) was provided by
chemical analyses and by analyses performed using a scanning electron microscope with automated capability to quantify minerals
through elemental composition (QEMSCAN). The data gathered includes percentages of total Cu, Fe and soluble Cu, percentages of chalcocite, covellite, chalcopyrite and pyrite, percentage of Cu oxide ores
(mainly brochantite), percentages of dumped resources with mineralization types dened as M1, M2 and M3, and the content of arsenic
expressed in ppm, among others.
The three mineralization types were dened taking into account
the lithology, the alteration and the acid consumption. M1 enclosed
mineralization in porphyries and breccias with quartzsericitic alteration. M2 came from a body of andesites with chlorite, sericite and
clay alteration, and it has the highest acid consumption. M3 includes
mineralization in andesites, porphyries and breccias with quartz,
sericitic and potassic alteration.
In addition, information about tail mineralogy was collected once
the strip operation nished. This information includes percentages
of total Cu, Fe and soluble Cu, percentages of chalcocite, covellite,
chalcopyrite and pyrite, percentage of Cu oxide ores. Since there is
no seal between each lift, and PLS samples are collected at rst lift,

Fig. 1. Schematic design of the heap considering the three lifts and eight strips. The squares in the bottom of the heap represent the collection points of PLS from each strip.

P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

it was necessary to aggregate the tail mineralogy of the rst lift to the
initial mineralogy of the second lift considering the mass of each lift:

Min

tail min L1  mass L1 initial min L2  mass L2

mass L1 mass L2

where Min represents each mineralogical parameter in the strip

(percentages of total Cu, Fe and soluble Cu, percentages of chalcocite,
covellite, chalcopyrite and pyrite or percentage of Cu oxide ores), tail
min L1 is the mineralogy of the tail of the rst lift, mass L1 is the mass
of the rst lift, initial min L2 is the initial mineralogy of the second lift,
mass L2 is the mass of the second lift. The loss of mass during the
leaching cycle (estimated at 34%) was not considered.
2.3. Physicochemical characterization of PLS samples
Physicochemical parameters pH, Eh (mV) and PLS temperature
(C) were measured daily, as well as the concentration of H + (g/L),
Cu 2+ (g/L), Fe 2+ (g/L) and total Fe (g/L). The ambient temperature
(C) was also recorded.
2.4. Microbiological and molecular characterization
Most probable number (MPN) of iron and sulfur oxidizing microorganisms were determined as described before (Escobar and Godoy,
1999). The highest decimal dilution was 10 8 and 5 wells were analyzed for each data point. The 95% condence limit values were
obtained from standardized MPN tables. In addition, genomic DNA
was extracted (the A260/A280 and A260/A230 ratios ranged between
1.871.67 and 1.601.15, respectively, the ratios accepted as pure for
DNA range between 1.82.2 and 1.8, respectively), and real
time-PCR (qPCR) was performed to specically determine the copy
numbers of 16S rRNA of two strains of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans
(D2 and DM), Leptospirillum ferriphilum (Type I and Type II),
Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans, Sulfobacillus spp., Sulfobacillus strain G1,
Ferroplasma spp., Acidithiobacillus caldus and Sulfolobus metallicus in
the industrial samples as previously described (Galleguillos et al.,
2008; Remonsellez et al., 2009). Each qPCR analysis was performed
using three replicates (the standard deviation did not exceed 0.4).
The magnitude order of cell count expressed as log10 was used to
apply the data mining techniques.
2.5. Oxidation activity tests
Sulfur and ferrous iron oxidation activities of PLS samples were
determined by incubation in a shake asks at 25 C as described previously (Galleguillos et al., 2008). The Eh in the tests, after increasing
the ferrous iron to 4 g/L, ranged between 614 and 643 mV; therefore,
the tests could be considered as starting at similar Eh values (data not
shown). The ferrous iron oxidation prole was analyzed daily during
a 30-day period.
2.6. Data modeling
A process based on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD)
was followed. KDD is an iterative process used to refer to the overall
process of discovering useful knowledge from data. Data mining is a
particular step in this process application of specic algorithms
for extracting patterns or models from data. The additional steps in
the KDD process, such as data preparation, data selection, data
cleaning, incorporation of appropriate prior knowledge, and proper
interpretation of the results of mining ensure that useful knowledge
is derived from the data (Fayyad et al., 1996). Two data mining techniques were used: Hierarchical clustering and Decision tree both
generated using PASW Statistics 18 Software (SPSS).

53

Hierarchical clustering (Maimon and Rokach, 2005) was performed

to discover a set of groups using mineralogical data (normalized between 0 and 1), Euclidean distance and Ward's method (Maimon and
Rokach, 2005) which tends to result in spherical, tightly bound clusters
and is less sensitive to outliers. Hierarchical clustering has as result a
dendrogram (Maimon and Rokach, 2005), which represents the nested
grouping of objects and similarity levels at which groupings change.
Once the groups were found, decision trees (Maimon and Rokach,
2005) were generated. Decision trees classify instances by sorting
them down the tree from the root to some leaf node, which provides
the classication of the instance. Each node in the tree species a test
of some attribute of the instance, and each branch descending from
that node corresponds to one of the possible values for this attribute.
An instance is classied by starting at the root node of the tree, testing
the attribute specied by this node, then moving down the tree
branch (Mitchell, 1997).The main advantage of this technique is
that during the process of exploring options, chance events are excluded at every step, producing a unique nal outcome.
The algorithm CRT or CART (Classication and Regression Trees)
(Breiman et al., 1984) was used. This algorithm does successive binary partitions on data guided by a criterion (target variable). When the
criterion is a nominal value, CRT performs a classication process. The
classication in CRT algorithm uses a metric called impurity to decide when it makes a new partition in the data. The impurity measured the grade of concentration of the observations that fulll the
target variable criterion in a tree node. A good quality impurity measure is that all observations satisfy the target variable criterion. The
CRT denes a threshold in order to dene how the tree partitions
are made. The GINI index (Maimon and Rokach, 2005) is the way
that is used to calculate the impurity in this work. The subtraction between a parent node and child node in impurity metric is called improvement and it shows how much the classication process was
enhanced in the new tree level.
The CRT algorithm was used to deepen in the differences among
the groups with mineralogical data and then to explore if any relationships exist between mineralogy groups and physicochemical, microbiological and molecular characterization of PLS samples. For the
rst tree the target variable was the mineralogy group (generated
by hierarchical clustering) and mineralogy parameters were considered as independent variables. For the second tree the target variable
was also the mineralogy group and the physicochemical, oxidation
proles, microbiological and molecular characterization were considered as the independent variables. The decision trees were generated
with 10-fold validation.
3. Results
3.1. Mineralogy groups
The input parameters used to generate the hierarchical clustering
were mineralogical data: soluble Cu (SCu), Pyrite (Py), and the Cu
bearing ore content chalcocite (CC), covellite (CV), chalcopyrite
(CPY) and oxide ores (OX). These parameters were calculated using
Eq. (1) to consider the initial mineralogy of the second lift and the
tail mineralogy of the rst lift as the complete system. Hierarchical
clustering divided the leaching strips into three groups (G1G3) considering the level 3. The rst group (G1) is formed by leaching strips
201205 and the strip 213, the second group (G2) considered strips
206 to 212, and the third group (G3) was formed by strips 214 to
218 (Fig. 2).
Fig. 3 shows the values of the six input parameters used to generate hierarchical clustering to segment the data in the three groups.
Fig. 3A shows that G2 had lower levels of SCu than G1 and G3, also
it shows that G3 had lower levels of Py than G1 and G2. Fig. 3B
shows that G2 had the lowest percentage of oxide ores and lower percentage of chalcocite than G1 and G3.

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P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

Fig. 2. Dendrogram generated by PASW Statistics 18 Software using mineralogical data from strips in the second lift. The horizontal axis shows the identication of the strips
(201218) and the conformation of the three groups (G1G3).

Fig. 3. Distribution of the mineralogical parameters considered to group the strips from the second lift at Escondida industrial bioleaching heap.

The analysis of copper recovery in each group showed that G2

had the fastest leaching kinetics followed by G1, and nally, G3
had the slowest leaching kinetics (Fig. 4). The recovery was calculated considering the total copper loaded in the second lift and the
remaining copper of the rst lift. A smoothed t line computed by
means of locally weighted iterative robust least squares regression
(LOESS) was obtained for each group. This method computes a

series of regressions, each focused on a small area within the plot,

and produces a series of local regression lines that are then joined
to create a smooth curve.
In addition, the groups were explored using CRT to understand
how they were formed (Fig. 5). The target variable in the classication process was the group associated to the instance observed, this
value was generated by the hierarchical clustering (G1, G2, and G3).

Fig. 4. LOESS smoother curves calculated from the copper recovery (%) obtained from the different strips of each group of the second lift at Escondida industrial bioleaching heap.

P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

55

DM, L. ferriphilum type I and type II, A. thiooxidans, Sulfobacillus spp. and
strain G1, Ferroplasma spp., A. caldus, S. metallicus and time required for
iron oxidation. In the rst partition of the classication tree built (Fig. 6),
the temperature parameter generated a left branch that had the highest
number (83% approximately) of instances corresponding to G3 and the
right branch uses the MPN Fe parameter to generate a second partition
of the tree generated with two branches, one of them having the highest
number of instances corresponding to G1 (73% approximately) and the
other one, the highest number of instances corresponding to G2 (69%
approximately). This shows the strong inuence of the temperature
and MPN Fe parameters. Other parameters may give additional information about the microorganisms related with internal processes in
each of the groups.
Then G2 is characterized by temperature > 25 C and magnitude
order of MPN Fe greater than 3.2. Following the tree it is possible to
obtain the characteristics of the other groups (G1 and G3). Each
node in this tree had a mix of instances related to different mineralogy groups. This indicates that having only one parameter in each partition, as a consequence of the variability of parameters introduced to
the CRT algorithm, is not enough to make a complete classication.
This result is consistent with the mineralogy group conformation,
group G2 contained the highest percentages of CPY and Py (Fig. 3)
that could generate the highest temperature.

Fig. 5. Decision tree generated with CRT using mineralogical factors. At the rst level,
the CC parameter classies the totality of instances of G2 (CC 0.21%), and at the second level, the CPY parameter is added to classify G1 (CC >0.21% and CPY 0.16%) and
G3 (CC >0.21% and CPY > 0.16%).

The independent variables used as parameters were the same as

those used to build the groups.
The rst partition of the tree, the CC parameter generates a branch
that classies the totality of instances of G2 when CC is 0.21%, and
when CC is >0.21%, then a new branch appears and the CPY parameter generates a separation for the groups G1 and G3. This suggests
that CC and CPY were strong parameters in the group conformation
process.
This result is in agreement with the information gathered from
group conformation study (Fig. 3A and B), where the G2 (which
have the fastest leaching kinetics) had the lowest amount of CC,
SCu, and Ox, and the highest level of CPY and Py. Similarly, the
other groups showed a different combination of these parameters
producing a clear separation of each other.
3.2. Operational and microbiological parameters and their relation with
the mineralogy groups
In order to identify the relationship between the mineralogy groups
and the operational and microbiological parameters another CRT was
built using as a target parameter the mineralogy group associated to
the independent parameters: pH, Eh, PLS temperature (temp), Cu2+
(Cu), total Fe, most probable number of iron (MPN_Fe) and sulfur
(MPN_S) oxidizing microorganisms, A. ferrooxidans strain D2 and strain

Fig. 6. Decision tree generated with CRT using physicochemical, oxidation proles,
microbiological and molecular characterization of PLS samples. At the rst level, the
PLS temperature classies most of G3 (83% approximately), and at the second level,
the magnitude order of MPN Fe is added to classify most of G1 (73% approximately)
and G2 (69% approximately).

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P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

3.3. PLS temperature, PLS Eh, MPN and 16S copy numbers in PLS
solutions
Temperature and MPN Fe (Fig. 6), and other parameters used as
input to generate the tree, such as Eh and the 16S rRNA copy numbers
of A. ferrooxidans DM were also found as relevant during the exploration of the important parameters for the partitioning of the groups
discovered by the CRT algorithm. Fig. 7 shows the distribution of temperature, MPN Fe, Eh and A. ferrooxidans DM in the three groups. The
temperature in G2 reached the highest levels followed by G1 and nally G3, this is consistent with the leaching kinetics of copper recovery (Fig. 4) and with the mineralogy of the groups since G2 had the
highest levels of pyrite and chalcopyrite and G3 had the lowest
level of pyrite and the highest level of oxide ores. The Eh prole
tends to be stable between 750 and 850 mV in G1 and G2. In G3 the
Eh began at a low level during the rst cycle stage (around
100 days) and then it remained stable at 800 mV, which could be
an indicator of the chalcocite leaching. The MPN Fe showed a decreasing trend in G1 and G3, which agrees with the expected decrease of
substrate. However in G2 MPN Fe tends to be constant, which could
indicate that in G2 there was a continuous release of substrate during
the bioleaching cycle. In addition, G1 has the largest number of samples under the detection limit of MPN Fe (10 2). The exploration of the
bacterial growth inside the strips of G1 (201205 and 213) showed
that the percentage of samples with MPN over the detection limit
were: 12% (201), 32% (202), 58% (203), 67% (204), 76% (205) and
100% (213). Moreover, the 16S rRNA copy numbers of A. ferrooxidans
DM showed a clear relationship with the MPN Fe.

4. Discussion
Once again, data mining techniques hierarchical clustering
have allowed us to gain knowledge from data obtained from the industrial bioleaching process.
The good agreement between the segmentation of the strips considering the mineralogy groups and the different proles of copper
recovery allow us to infer that mineralogical parameters are relevant
in determining the kinetic of bioleaching.
The classication tree results (Fig. 5) showed that the group with
the fastest copper leaching kinetics G2 has lower CC grade than G1
and G3. After that, another classication tree (Fig. 6) showed that
during the operation of G2 the PLS reached a temperature higher
than 25 C and the order of magnitude of MPN Fe in the same solutions is higher than 3.2. By a deeper study of the data (Fig. 7) it is understood that the highest temperature in G2 could be a result of the
heat generated by the oxidation reaction of sulde ores considering
the highest content of CPY (H 508 kJ mol 1) and PY (H
306 kJ mol 1) (Petersen and Dixon, 2002) showed in Fig. 3. The
stages of chalcocite leaching (Demergasso et al., 2010) (at low Eh
and low temperature before the 100 days of operation) and of pyrite
and chalcopyrite leaching (and covellite) (at high Eh and high temperature) are well represented (Fig. 7 G3 and G2, respectively). Moreover, considering the model about the heat balance inside the
bioleaching heap of chalcocite, the differences between the core of
the heap and the bottom where the PLS temperature is measured
could reach up to 30 C in a column of 10 m high (Leahy et al.,
2007). Considering that the heap is 36 m high 18 m per lift and

Fig. 7. PLS temperature (C), Eh PLS samples (mV), MPN of Fe II-oxidizing microorganisms (cells/mL) in PLS and 16S rRNA copy numbers (copy numbers/mL) of A. ferrooxidans DM
of each strip from the second lift along the leaching cycle. Copy numbers are expressed in log10.

P.E. Soto et al. / Hydrometallurgy 133 (2013) 5157

the fresh material is in the rst 18 m, it is possible to suppose a difference from 15 to 20 C between the heat source and the bottom of the
heap. Then, being conservative, it is possible to estimate a range of
temperatures from 40 to 52 C in the heat source of the heap (Fig. 7
G2, Temp in the heat source = PLS temp + 1520 C). The detection
of A. caldus population with an average density of 10 4 cell mL 1 represents strong evidence supporting that estimation (data not shown).
In that frame of temperature the Cu released from grounded CPY mineral (70 m) in ferric sulfate solution at pH 1.8 change from 15 to 60%
at 622 mV of Eh when the temperature was increased from 46 to
57 C (Crdoba et al., 2008). Similar results were found in agglomerated columns of chalcopyrite, copper leached reached 31% at 40 C
and 671 mV of Eh (Mutch et al., 2010).
The results of the QEMSCAN conrmed that the CPY dissolution
reached in the G2 strip's tails was higher than strips of G1 (data not
shown). Meanwhile, the leaching stage of chalcocite in the G3 prole
was mainly represented at low Eh and low temperature, at high Eh
there was not such an increase in temperature from PY/CPY oxidation,
perhaps due to the lowest content of PY of G3. The galvanic interactions between PY and CPY in sulfate media have been reported as affecting signicantly the leaching of CPY (Koleini et al., 2011), and it
could be a reason to explain that feature. In spite of the lowest content
of CC in the G2 strips, the substrates (CC, PY, and CPY) that supported
the bacterial growth (MPN Fe) were larger than in G3 strips and conrmed our hypothesis that the bacterial growth had a direct relationship with the microbial substrate inside the ores (Demergasso et al.,
2010). In that sense, a high bacterial density and a high bacterial
growth and sustained during a long period are found in the G2 strips
together with an improved Cu extraction. Substrate availability has
been reported to be an important parameter that affect biomass production in different bioleaching systems (Watling et al., 2011).
In the same way analyzing the MPN Fe prole of the strips inside
the G2 and G3, it is clear that they were similar to the 16S rRNA of
A. ferrooxidans DM prole, but MPN Fe was, in average, one order of
magnitude lower than 16S rRNA of A. ferrooxidans DM (Fig. 7). In
the G1 strips there are several samples without new iron oxidizing
cell growth (MPN below the detection limit) during almost the
whole leaching cycle in spite of the range of 16S rRNA copy number
of predominant microorganisms was between 10 3 and 10 7 cell mL
1
. It makes the MPN Fe prole different to the 16S rRNA of A.
ferrooxidans DM (Fig. 7). In denitrier populations, the difference between the MPN counts and other useful enumeration techniques had
been explained because MPN counts fail as a precise or accurate enumeration of all denitriers in soil, but they do seem to provide a sensitive indication of new denitrier growth (Kendall et al., 1988). The
investigation of the data showed that MPN Fe were below the detection limit in most of the strips of the rst lift in operation before the
start of the irrigation of the second lift (most of them had been loaded
with high content of oxide ores than previous strips). In addition the
MPN Fe started to increase gradually during the operation of the G1
strips (from 12 to 76% of the samples gave results above the detection
limit in the 201 and 205 strips, respectively). Then it is possible to
infer that the low kinetic in the copper recovery observed in G1 was
due to the lowest bacterial growth. And the lowest bacterial growth
into G1 was not apparently due to a combination of factors (mineralogical and operational), but to the low bacterial growth in the system
when they started G1 irrigation. Up to now, it was not possible to nd
the parameter(s) to explain that low bacterial growth. A similar situation was observed in the ferrous iron oxidation activity results of the
G1 and the rst lift expressed as the time needed to oxidized 4 g/L of
Fe II (data not shown).
5. Conclusions
Data mining tools have been useful to propose and to conrm hypotheses from data obtained from industrial bioleaching systems.

57

Using data coming from the analysis of the minerals dumped on

the different strips of the industrial heap, it was possible to infer the
relationship between the mineral substrate availability and the microbial growth.
A clear direct relationship has been established between the microbial growth and the metallurgical performance of the industrial
process.
This kind of information must be considered to formulate models
to describe and predict copper recovery in industrial bioleaching
processes.
There are still lacking of aspects to describe microbial growth in
the bioleaching system. The limitations on the microbial growth
that were not explained by the model could be due, for instance, to
changes in air availability/distribution that are not included as variables in the analysis.
In order to answer that new highlighted question derived from
this work it is necessary to get and prepare the data available and to
apply a new cycle of the KDD process.
Acknowledgment
This work was partly supported by the InnovaChile Project
08CM01-03 and CICITEM. We also would like to thank M.V. Coalova
and Dr. B.M. Grail (Bangor University) for their collaboration in critical reading of the paper.
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