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Currently the vast majority of the world's copper is obtained through sulfide mineral processing. Primary copper sulfides are the most economically relevant due to their abundance. Therefore, several technologies have been developed in order to achieve an efficient copper extraction from these types of copper sulfides. Among these developments, the hydrometallurgical options of bioleaching as well as chemical chloride leaching are prevailing for copper sulfides due to their good results at lab, pilot and industrial scale. However, comparisons are not available among technologies due to differences in scale and mineral/ore used in different studies. In this work, we have compared bioleaching and chemical chloride leaching technologies (including sulfuric acid-sodium chloride ore pre-treatment) for a mainly primary copper sulfide ore. This comparative analysis showed first that bioleaching and chemical chloride …