Aluminum hydroxide Bayer process

Starch is a polysaccharide found in many plant species. Com and potatoes are two common sources of industrial starch. The composition of starch varies somewhat in terms of the amount of branching of the polymer chains (11). Its principal use as a flocculant is in the Bayer process for extracting aluminum from bauxite ore. The digestion of bauxite in sodium hydroxide solution produces a suspension of finely divided iron minerals and siUcates, called red mud, in a highly alkaline Hquor. Starch is used to settle the red mud so that relatively pure alumina can be produced from the clarified Hquor. It has been largely replaced by acryHc acid and acrylamide-based (11,12) polymers, although a number of plants stiH add some starch in addition to synthetic polymers to reduce the level of residual suspended soHds in the Hquor. Starch [9005-25-8] can be modified with various reagents to produce semisynthetic polymers. The principal one of these is cationic starch, which is used as a retention aid in paper production as a component of a dual system (13,14) or a microparticle system (15). 

A commercial process which uses hydrothermal leaching on a large scale is the Bayer process for production of aluminum oxide (see Aluminum compounds). This process is used to extract and precipitate high grade alurninum hydroxide (gibbsite [14762-49-3]) from bauxite [1318-16-7] ore. The hydrothermal process step is the extraction step in which concentrated sodium hydroxide is used to form a soluble sodium aluminate complex ... 

A.lkaline Solutions. The most important example of alkaline leach is the digestion of hydrated alumina from bauxite by a sodium hydroxide solution at 160-170°C, ie, the Bayer process (see Aluminumand aluminum alloys). 

Aluminum. All primary aluminum as of 1995 is produced by molten salt electrolysis, which requires a feed of high purity alumina to the reduction cell. The Bayer process is a chemical purification of the bauxite ore by selective leaching of aluminum according to equation 35. Other oxide constituents of the ore, namely siUca, iron oxide, and titanium oxide remain in the residue, known as red mud. No solution purification is required and pure aluminum hydroxide is obtained by precipitation after reversing reaction 35 through a change in temperature or hydroxide concentration the precipitate is calcined to yield pure alumina. 

Aluminum fluoride is also made by the reaction of fluosiUcic acid [16961 -83-4] H2SiFg, a by-product from phosphoric acid production (see Phosphoric ACID AND THE PHOSPHATES), and aluminum hydroxide from the Bayer process. 

Eigure 1 illustrates the Bayer process as it is practiced in the 1990s. The primary purpose of a Bayer plant is to process bauxite to provide pure alumina for the production of aluminum. World production of Al(OH)2 totaled ca 55 x 10 t in 1988. Practically all of the hydroxide was obtained by Bayer processing and 90% of it was calcined to metallurgical grade alumina (AI2O2). However, about 10% of the bauxite processed serves as feedstock to the growing aluminum chemicals industry. 

Commercial production of bayerite is relatively small and employs CO2 neutralization of caustic aluminate Hquor obtained from either Bayer or sinter processes. The product obtained is about 90% crystalline bayerite having small amounts of gibbsite, pseudoboehmite, and amorphous aluminum hydroxides. 

Aluminum is the most abundant metallic element in the Earth s crust and, after oxygen and silicon, the third most abundant element (see Fig. 14.1). However, the aluminum content in most minerals is low, and the commercial source of aluminum, bauxite, is a hydrated, impure oxide, Al203-xH20, where x can range from 1 to 3. Bauxite ore, which is red from the iron oxides that it contains (Fig. 14.23), is processed to obtain alumina, A1203, in the Bayer process. In this process, the ore is first treated with aqueous sodium hydroxide, which dissolves the amphoteric alumina as the aluminate ion, Al(OH)4 (aq). Carbon dioxide is then bubbled through the solution to remove OH ions as HCO and to convert some of the aluminate ions into aluminum hydroxide, which precipitates. The aluminum hydroxide is removed and dehydrated to the oxide by heating to 1200°C. 

In the flowsheet of alumina production by the Bayer process, aluminum is precipitated from an aqueous solution as aluminum hydroxide. The hydroxide is dried in rotary furnaces. In recent times, fluidized-bed reactors have been deployed which yield practically nonhygroscopic alumina. The dissociation of aluminum hydroxide occurs in steps,... 

All the silica present in the bauxite was converted to insoluble sodium aluminosilicate, which represented a loss of sodium and aluminum. The aluminum hydroxide was calcined to the oxide, and the sodium carbonate solution was concentrated for re-use. The process was developed by H. E. St-Claire Deville in the 1860s the carbon dioxide stage had been invented earlier by H. L. Le Chatelier. It was superseded by the Bayer process. 

Hall-Heroult An electrolytic process for making aluminum metal from alumina, invented in 1886 independently by C. M. Hall in the United States, and P. L. Heroult in France. The alumina, made by the Bayer process, is dissolved infused cryolite, Na3AlF6, and electrolyzed at approximately 1,000°C. Because of the large requirement for electricity, the process is operated only where hydroelectric power is available. The cryolite was originally obtained from a deposit in Greenland but is now made synthetically from alumina, hydrofluoric acid, and sodium hydroxide ... 

The production of aluminum actually involves several steps. Bauxite is the ore that contains aluminum oxide (Al Oj) used to produce aluminum. Impurities of iron, sulfur, silicon and other elements are removed from bauxite using the Bayer process to produce purified alumina. The Bayer process, patented in 1887 by Austrian Karl Josef Bayer (1847-1904), involves pulverizing bauxite and treating it with a hot sodium hydroxide solution to produce sodium alu-minate (NaA102). Sodium aluminate is then placed in a reactor in which temperature and pressure can be varied to precipitate out impurities. The sodium aluminate solution is then hydrolyzed to produce purified alumina ... 

Iron(III) oxide or alumina is refined from bauxite. Approximately 175 million tons of bauxite are mined annually worldwide, with virtually all of this processed into alumina. Alumina is a white crystalline substance that resembles salt. Approximately 90% of all alumina is used for making aluminum, with the remainder used for abrasives and ceramics. Alumina is produced from bauxite using the Bayer process patented in 1887 by Austrian Karl Josef Bayer (1847-1904). The Bayer process begins by grinding the bauxite and mixing it with sodium hydroxide in a digester. The sodium hydroxide dissolves aluminum oxide components to produce aluminum hydroxide compounds. For gibbsite, the reaction is Al(OH)3 + NaOH —> Al(OH)4 + Na+. Insoluble impurities such as silicates, titanium oxides, and iron oxides are removed from the solution while sodium hydroxide is recovered and recycled. Reaction conditions are then... 

Alkali leach methods axe exemplified by the Bayer process for the preparation of pure a-A C for electrolysis (Section 17.5) from the mineral bauxite. Bauxite consists mainly of a-AlO(OH) (diaspore) and/or 7-A10(0H) (boehmite), the difference between these being essentially that the oxygen atoms form hep and ccp arrays, respectively. The chief contaminants are silica, some clay minerals, and iron(III) oxides/hydroxides, which impart a red-brown color to the mineral. Aluminum (III) is much more soluble than iron(III) or aluminosilicates in alkali, so that it can be leached out with aqueous NaOH (initially 10-15 mol L 1) at 165 °C under approximately 0.6 MPa pressure, leaving a red mud of iron (and other transition metal) oxides/hydroxides and aluminosilicates ... 

BAYER PROCESS. Process for making alumina from bauxite. The main use of alumina is in the production of metallic aluminum. Bauxite is mixed with hot concentrated sodium hydroxide, which dissolves the alumina and silica. The silica is precipitated, and the dissolved alumina is separated from the solids, diluted, cooled, and then crystallized as aluminum hydroxide. The aluminum hydroxide is calcined to anhydrous alumina, which is then shipped to reduction plants. 

The dissolution of hydrated alumina in concentrated aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide at elevated temperatures and pressures is the basic step in the extraction of aluminum from bauxite via the Bayer process.34 This dissolution reaction is described by the equation... 

Aluminum hydroxide is produced from bauxite. The ore is dissolved in a solution of sodium hydroxide, and aluminum hydroxide is precipitated from the sodium aluminate solution by neutralization (as with carbon dioxide) or by autoprecipitation (Bayer process) (HSDB 1995 Sax and Lewis 1987). 

Aluminum oxide is produced during the recovery of bauxite, which is crushed, ground, and kiln dried, followed by leaching with sodium hydroxide, forming sodium aluminate, from which alumina trihydrate is precipitated and calcined (Bayer process) (HSDB 1995). 

Aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)3), also known as alumina trihydrate or ATH, is produced using the Bayer process from the mineral bauxite (a crude form of aluminum hydroxide containing 40%-70%... 

These problems are avoided if a continuous process is employed for the precipitation however, this makes higher demands on the process control. In a continuous process all parameters as temperature, concentrations, pH, and residence times of the precipitate can be kept constant or altered at will. Continuous operation is, for instance, used for the precipitation of aluminum hydroxide in the Bayer process. Bayer aluminum hydroxide is the main source for the production of cata-lytically active aluminas. The precipitation step of the Bayer process is carried out continuously. An aluminum solution supersaturated with respect to Al(OH)3, but not supersaturated enough for homogeneous nu-cleation, enters the precipitation vessel which already contains precipitate so that heterogeneous precipitation is possible. The nucleation rate has to be controlled very carefully to maintain constant conditions. This is usually done by controlling the temperature of the system to within 2-3 degrees [7]. 

Aluminum is the second most abundant metal on earth s crust. It is a common metal in tropical soils called laterites (red soils). It is extracted from bauxite that is a rich laterite by Bayer process that involves dissolution and separation of the oxide in caustic soda solution between 150 and 250°C and 20 atm of pressure. Though abundant and inexpensive, alumina based CBPCs are difficult to form because even in an acid solution the solubility of alumina is very low. This solubility, however, can be enhanced by a mUd thermal treatment and suitable CBPCs can be formed. Alumina is available commercially as calcined alumina called corundum, or as its hydrated forms such as aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)3), as bohmite, (A1203-3H20), gibbsite (AI2O3 H2O) or in impure forms as in kaolin clay. These mineral forms and their use in ceramic formation are discussed in Chapter 11. 

Two conventional processes were employed. In one process, aluminum hydroxide was produced by the so-called Bayer process, while in the other, hydrogen was produced by the steam reforming of natural gas. 

One of the most important developments in the field of hydrometallurgy has been the application of elevated pressures and temperatures to complex sulfide and oxide ores (B21, F8, G8, M5, M6). The pressure-leaching of bauxite ores by the Bayer process (E3) is probably the first successful commercial application of this technique. The bauxite ore is leached with sodium hydroxide solution with a specific gravity of 1.36-1.4 at 160-170°C for 1 2 hr under a working pressure of 100 psig. The alumina is produced by calcining the aluminum hydrate precipitated from the leach liquor. 

In the first step in this process, aluminum oxide is separated from other oxides (such as oxides of iron) with which it also occurs by the Bayer process. In the Bayer process, the naturally occurring oxide mixture is added to sodium hydroxide, which dissolves out aluminum... 

Bayer process—process in which sodium hydroxide is added to a mixture of naturally occurring oxides so that aluminum oxide is dissolved out of the mixture. 

Aluminum production is a two-step process. First, aluminum oxide is separated from bauxite by the Bayer process. In this process, bauxite is mixed with sodium hydroxide (NaOH), which dissolves the aluminum oxide. The other compounds in bauxite are left behind. 

The industrial manufacture of aluminum hydroxide and aluminum oxide currently proceeds almost exclusively by the Bayer process i.e. by wet digestion of bauxite. The sinter- and melt-digestion processes with sodium carbonate and/or lime only have minor industrial importance. 

In the Bayer process, ground bauxite is digested with aqueous sodium hydroxide (200 to 350 g/L sodium hydroxide) at temperatures of 140 to 250°C in autoclaves or in continuous tube reactors, in which the hydrated aluminum hydroxide is dissolved as sodium aluminate. The iron-containing very finely divided so-called red mud is then separated in thickening and filter units and washed. Ca. 1 to 2 t of red mud is produced per t aluminum oxide. 

Sodium aluminate (theoretical formula NaA102) has a certain industrial importance not only as an intermediate in the digestion of bauxite in the Bayer process (see Section 3.2.4.2). USA production of sodium aluminate in 1993 was estimated to be 85 10- t/a. Sodium aluminate is produced by dissolving hydrated aluminum oxide in 50% sodium hydroxide. It is utilized in water purification, in the paper industry, for the post-treatment of Ti02-pigments, for the manufacture of aluminum-containing... 

Fine particulate aluminum hydroxide is obtained either by introducing special seeding processes into the Bayer process or by precipitation processes precipitation from cooled and strongly diluted aluminate liquors. 

In the normal Bayer process coarse particulate aluminum hydroxide is formed, which is processed by grinding and sieving to particle sizes between 10 and 100 pm... 

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