Patent ID: 7125436

Claim:
A process for recovering a metal value from a metal-bearing material comprising the steps of: subjecting a metal-bearing material to a reactive process to liberate at least one metal value from said metal-bearing material; incorporating at least one seeding agent into said reactive process wherein said reactive process comprises pressure leaching at a temperature of from about 170° C. to about 235° C.; wherein said seeding agent comprises at least a portion of a residue from said reactive process; recovering metals which are present in said residue from said reactive process before using said residue as said seeding agent; obtaining a product from said reactive process wherein at least one metal value is present in said product and wherein said metal value is selected from the group consisting of copper, gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, zinc, rhenium, uranium, rare earth metals, and platinum group metals; and extracting said at least one metal value from said product using electrowinning.