Bauxite digestion

In the Kraft recovery process the green liquor, which is an aqueous solution of sodium carbonate, is heated with lime to produce white liquor or caustic soda, which is then returned to the pulp digestion operations. In the production of alumina, lime and soda are fed to bauxite digesters. The CaCO 3 produced during the course of the reaction is rebumed to lime and is recycled. The main difficulties associated with these processes include the extensive mechanical handling through the use of causticizers, settlers, and repulpers in order to produce caustic that is low in carbonate and the high fuel consumption needed to reconvert CaCO to lime. 

The aluminum hydroxide-depleted alkali is, after separating off the aluminum hydroxide, partially evaporated and then returned to the bauxite digestion. The aluminum hydroxide obtained is processed mainly by calcination in rotating tube furnaces or in, energy-saving (VAW-Lurgi process), fluidized bed furnaces at 1200 to 1300°C to aluminum oxide (a-Al203). A small quantity of the aluminum hydroxide is carefully dried and used as such. 

In 1990, appioximately 66,000 metric tons of alumina trihydiate [12252-70-9] AI2O2 3H20, the most widely used flame retardant, was used to inhibit the flammabihty of plastics processed at low temperatures. Alumina trihydrate is manufactured from either bauxite ore or recovered aluminum by either the Bayer or sinter processes (25). In the Bayer process, the bauxite ore is digested in a caustic solution, then filtered to remove siUcate, titanate, and iron impurities. The alumina trihydrate is recovered from the filtered solution by precipitation. In the sinter process the aluminum is leached from the ore using a solution of soda and lime from which pure alumina trihydrate is recovered (see Aluminum compounds). 

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.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). 

Other important reactions that occur in digestion are desiHcation, causticization of Hquor, and precipitation of impurities. The reactive siHca in bauxite, for example that in kaolin, reacts with caustic to form soluble sodium siHcate [1344-09-8], Na2Si02... 

Commercial grades of sodium aluminate are obtained by digestion of aluminum tnhydroxide in aqueous caustic at atmospheric pressure and near the boiling temperature (7). Digestion of the aluminum hydroxy oxide in aqueous sodium hycboxide [1310-73-2] requbes pressures of up to 1.38 MPa (13.6 atm) and temperatures of about 200°C. Dry sodium aluminate is obtained by evaporation of water. Several processes for the production of sodium aluminate are known that do not reqube the addition of water. In one process, bauxite reacts with molten sodium hycboxide at approximately 400°C (8) in... 

The optimum conditions for roasting the clay and the optimum strength (30—60%) of the sulfuric acid used depend on the particular raw material. Finely ground bauxite or roasted clay is digested with sulfuric acid near the boiling point of the solution (100—120°C). The clay or bauxite-to-acid ratio is adjusted to produce either acidic or basic alum as desired and soHds are removed by sedimentation. If necessary, the solution can be treated to remove iron. However, few, if any, of the many methods claimed to be useful for iron removal have been used industrially (29). Instead, most alum producers prefer to use raw materials that are naturally low in iron and potassium. 

Alumina (AfOf. Alumina is produced by calcining either bauxite or aluminum hydroxide in rotary Idlns at temperatures from 1250 to 1600 K. In obtaining the highest-purity alumina, the bauxite is digested with alkah to remove impurities the resultant aluminum hydroxide [AlgfOH) ], of approximately 200-mesh size, is then calcined in rotaiy Idlns at 1350 K. 

At the alumina plant, the bauxite ore is further crushed to the correct particle size for efficient extraction of the alumina through digestion by hot sodium hydroxide liquor. After removal of "red mud" (the insoluble part of the bauxite) and fine solids from the process liquor, aluminum trihydrate crystals are precipitated and calcined in rotary kilns or fluidized bed calciners to produce alumina (AljOj). Some alumina processes include a liquor purification step. 

The alkali process uses sodium hydroxide and is well known as Bayer s process. It involves relatively simple inorganic and physical chemistry and the entire flowsheet can be divided into caustic digestion, clarification, precipitation and calcination. Although mineral assemblage in bauxites is extensive, processing conditions are primarily influenced by the relative proportions of alumina minerals (gibbsite and boehmite), the iron minerals (goethite and hematite), and the silica minerals (quartz and clays-usually as kaolinite). 

Bayer A process for making pure alumina hydrate from bauxite, used principally as a raw material for the manufacture of aluminum metal. The ore is digested with hot sodium hydroxide solution, yielding a solution of sodium aluminate. Insoluble impurities are separated off in the form of red mud and the solution is then nucleated with alumina hydrate from a previous batch, causing alumina trihydrate to precipitate ... 

Bauxite is first digested in a strong caustic medium to produce a green liquor containing the 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... 

In the process to produce alumina (Fig. 1), bauxite is crushed and wet ground to 100-mesh, dissolved under pressure and heated in digesters with concentrated spent caustic soda solution from a previous cycle and sufficient lime and soda ash. Sodium aluminate is formed, and the dissolved silica is precipitated as sodium aluminum silicate. The undissolved residue (red mud) is separated from the alumina solution by filtration and washing and sent to recovery. Thickeners and Kelly or drum filters are used. The filtered solution of sodium aluminate is hydrolyzed to precipitate aluminum hydroxide by cooling. The precipitate is filtered from the liquor, washed, and heated to 980°C in a rotary kiln to calcine the aluminum hydroxide. 

In an attempt to upgrade the siliceous bauxites and other aluminous materials, such as clay where the alumina usually is in the form of complex silicates, Skow and Conley (Si 9) considered the removal of the silica by caustic digestion. Prior to leaching, the aluminuous materials were calcined at 970°C, resulting in an optimal removal of silica with little loss in alumina content in the subsequent leaching step. The desilication step is necessary prior to using the raw materials as feed to the standard Bayer process (E3). The pilot plant operation to extract alumina from an anorthosite ore has been reported by St. Clair et al. (S24). 

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