Concentration leaching

Hydrometallurigcal Processes. In hydrometaHurgical processes, metal values and by-products are recovered from aqueous solution by chemical or electrolytic processes. Values are solubilized by treating waste, ore, or concentrates. Leaching of copper ores in place by rain or natural streams and the subsequent recovery of copper from mnoff mine water as impure cement copper have been practiced since Roman times. Most hydrometaHurgical treatments have been appHed to ores or overburden in which the copper was present as oxide, mixed oxide—sulfide, or native copper. PyrometaHurgical and hydrometaHurgical processes are compared in Reference 34. 

A. F. Chinn, R. T. McAndrew, R. L. Hummel and J. E. Mouland, Application of Short Bed Reciprocating Flow Ion Exchange to Copper/zinc Separation from Concentrated Leach Solutions, Hydrometallurgy, 30, 431-444 (1992). 

Fig. 4 shows the elemental composition of four coal ashes, along with the mean maximum concentration leached from selected ashes. For the four samples, Ca, Mg, Na and K were the elements most readily released by leaching with water. These concentrations will rapidly decrease as the time since generation of the first leachate increases. 

The analysis of landfill effluents collected in Finland and Norway resulted in a maximum concentration observed for PFC of 1,537 ng/L [34]. In landfill effluents from 22 sites in Germany, a maximum concentration of EPFC of 13,000 ng/L was observed [29]. Although effluents of modem landfills are often collected and treated nowadays, many former landfills leach percolate water to groundwater aquifers and are a potential source of PFCs to drinking water wells. It might be reasonable to assume that the concentrations leached into the environment would have been in the same order of magnitude as encountered in collected leachate. 

Diffusion and Mass Transfer During Leaching. Rates of extraction from individual particles are difficult to assess because it is impossible to define the shapes of the pores or channels through which mass transfer (qv) has to take place. However, the nature of the diffusional process in a porous soHd could be illustrated by considering the diffusion of solute through a pore. This is described mathematically by the diffusion equation, the solutions of which indicate that the concentration in the pore would be expected to decrease according to an exponential decay function. 

The rate of dissolution is limited by oxygen availabiUty rather than by cyanide concentration. When oxygen solubiUty is reduced by water salinity or by consumption by ore constituents such as sulfide minerals, enrichment of the air with oxygen or addition of hydrogen or calcium peroxide improves leaching kinetics and decreases cyanide consumption (10). 

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 ... 

Nickel and cobalt are recovered by processes that employ both pressure leaching and precipitation steps. The raw materials for these processes can be sulfide concentrates, matte, arsenide concentrates, and precipitated sulfides. Typically, acidic conditions are used for leaching however, ammonia is also effective in leach solutions because of the tendency for soluble cobalt and nickel ammines to form under the leach conditions. 

Production. Indium is recovered from fumes, dusts, slags, residues, and alloys from zinc or lead—zinc smelting. The source material itself, a reduction bullion, flue dust, or electrolytic slime intermediate, is leached with sulfuric or hydrochloric acid, the solutions are concentrated, if necessary, and cmde indium is recovered as 99+% metal. This impure indium is then refined to 99.99%, 99.999%, 99.9999%, or higher grades by a variety of classical chemical and electrochemical processes. 

Diluted iodate solution is obtained by hydrothermal vat leaching of caUche ore during nitrate recovery. Concentrated iodide solutions are obtained by heap leaching of old waste dumps (tailings) and low grade nitrate caUche, such as blasted overburden, left over by former nitrate producers. 

Opa.nte. There are two methods used at various plants in Russia for loparite concentrate processing (12). The chlorination technique is carried out using gaseous chlorine at 800°C in the presence of carbon. The volatile chlorides are then separated from the calcium—sodium—rare-earth fused chloride, and the resultant cake dissolved in water. Alternatively, sulfuric acid digestion may be carried out using 85% sulfuric acid at 150—200°C in the presence of ammonium sulfate. The ensuing product is leached with water, while the double sulfates of the rare earths remain in the residue. The titanium, tantalum, and niobium sulfates transfer into the solution. The residue is converted to rare-earth carbonate, and then dissolved into nitric acid. 

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