In this pa per, the meth od ol ogy used for op ti miz ing leach ing in a semi pi lot plant is pre sented.This leach ing pro cess was ap plied to re cover value met als from den tal amal gam res i dues. 2 3 fac to rial de sign was used to char ac ter ize the pro cess dur ing the first stage and in the sec ond one, a cen tral com pound ro ta tional de sign was used for mod el ing cop per per cent age dis solved, a func tion of the ni tric acid con cen tra tion, leach ing time and tem per a ture.This model explained the 81% of the re sponse vari abil ity, which is con sid ered sat is fac tory given the complex ity of the pro cess ki net ics and, fur ther more, it al lowed the def i ni tion of the op er a tion con ditions for better cop per re cov ery, which this was of 99.15%, at a tem per a ture of 55ºC, a con centra tion of 30% by weight and a time of 26 hours.