Nickel recovery

Small amounts of PGM have been produced in AustraUa for a number of years as a by-product of nickel recovery. There has been a significant increase in speculative exploration of the widespread known deposits in Western AustraUa, but as of this writing commercialization is not regarded as economically viable. 

The scheme E involves dead roasting of the concentrate by which Fe203 forms and the nickel content is oxidized to nickel ferrite (NiFe204). This material is selectively reduced to produce an iron-nickel alloy which is then leached in an ammoniacal ammonium carbonate solution for nickel recovery, leaving hematite as a leach residue. 

Oxidative pressure acid leaching is also applied to copper-nickel mattes. Nickel recoveries of >99% are obtained when leaching is carried out at 135-160 °C at oxygen partial pressures of 140-350 kPa,... 

Kirman, Lyle. 1988. "Some Unsolved Problems in Close Loop Nickel Recovery."... 

Nickel Sulfamate. Vltramon, a Thomas and Betts subsidiary, installed a 1 gpm ARO system to recover rinses and recycle nickel bath used to plate electronic capacitors. Previously, Vitramon had used an ion exchange system to remove the nickel. Ion exchange regenerant was shipped to a reclaimer. Water was reused. Ion exchange cost of operation was 4,000 per month. The ARO system maintains the rinse at less than 40 ppm nickel. Savings from nickel recovery and avoided treatment cost will provide a payback of approximately 10 months. 

A conventional wastewater treatment system with an average flow rate of 160,000 gpd produces effluent suitable for NPDES discharge. Metal hydroxide sludges are dewatered in a 15 cu. ft filter press producing more than one half ton of filter cake per day. The filter cake is further dewatered in a 7 cu. ft, batch-type sludge dryer. Based upon recommendations by their consultant, the firm also uses the sludge dryer to dehydrate nickel strip solutions. Two reverse osmosis systems are used for partial nickel recovery. Trivalent chromium is recovered by drag-out control and evaporation. 

The latest projects to eliminate the production of waste treatment sludges were undertaken in the wet process metal plating production area. The projects, completed in March 1989, involved the installation of separate cadmium, chrome, copper and nickel recovery systems. All of the recovery systems utilized redundant conventional ion exchange columns for initial metal waste recovery and concentration. 

Kaminski, M.D. Nunez, L. Extractant-coated magnetic particles for cobalt and nickel recovery from acidic solution, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 194 (1999) 31-36. 

Avci [19] developed a rotating tubular-bed reactor with extended cathode surface areas to improve mass transfer for nickel recovery from industrial Watts plating... 

The copper-free solution containing nickel, cobalt, ammonium sulfate, ammonium sulfamate, and some unsaturated sulfur compounds imdergoes an oxidation-hydrolysis step in an autoclave at 460°F under an air pressure of 600 psig. The unsaturated sulfur compounds are oxidized and sulfamate is hydrolyzed to sulfate. This step prevents the contamination of the fertilizer-grade ammonium sulfate with ammonium sulfamate and of the nickel with sulfur. The oxydrolyzed solution containing about 45 gm/liter Ni, 1 gm/liter Co, and 350 gm/liter (NH4)4S04 is ready for batchwise nickel recovery. 

This material has been either recycled or disposed of in sanitary landfills (or onsite). The recycling for nickel recovery has been spotty and not well organized until now in the United States and North America. 

A geological survey of India recently discovered three major deposits at Nallakonda, the lead-copper belt in Andhra Pradesh. The total reserves of all three are about 60.7 million tons. The interesting part of the investigation was that the samples indicated the presence of significant amounts of silver, cobalt, arsenic, and nickel, recovery of which was considered economically possible. 

Sulfur gases arising during synthetic crude production from the bitumen and from the high-pressure hydrogenation process for synthetic crude stabilization are captured in amine scrubbers, and subsequently converted to sulfur via the Claus process (Chap. 9). Approximately 1500 tonnes of sulfur are produced daily from these sources by the two older hot water extraction plants. Occasionally these control measures have been inadequate to maintain low ambient air sulfur dioxide concentrations, particularly during an inversion episode. The potential of vanadium and nickel recovery from fly ash, which is possible on the scale of 1,600 and 3,900 tonnes/year, respectively, has also been considered. 

Applications technologies in metal ion, inorganic species, hydrocarbons separations, biochemical and biomedical applications, and fine particles preparation using ELM are reviewed. Commercial applications include the removal of zinc, phenol, and cyanide from wastewaters. Potential applications in wastewater treatment, biochemical processing, rare earth metal extraction, radioactive material removal, and nickel recovery are described. 

Cobalt and Nickel Recovery. Cobalt and nickel are relatively valuable metals often found in complex ores such as laterites or deep sea nodules. The metals can only be extracted from these ores by hydrometallurgy. A proposed recovery scheme based on coupled transport is shown in Figure 9.29. The first membrane contains LIX 54, which produces a nickel and copper concentrate and a cobalt raffinate stream. The concentrate stream is then passed to a second Kelex 100 membrane, which produces a copper and nickel stream. The cobalt III raffinate stream is neutralized and reduced to cobalt II, which can then be concentrated by a LIX 51 membrane. 

S.N.A.M. decided to build its plant in 1982 in order to treat waste from battery manufacture in the USA and France (SAFT) and then to process negative electrodes from nickel recovery companies engaged in the dismantling of industrial batteries. 

AMJ has a completely new design comprising the use of tubular cells. A one-membrane prototype unit was built by AMJ and successfully tested as a nickel recovery system by Special Products. It appears that the tubular design could be adopted to make two-membrane cells for our electrodialysis process. Details are given in Appendix B. 

AMJ, located in Great Neck, NY, sells industrial equipment for electrodialysis and Donnan dialysis. Its special products division has tested successfully a prototype unit designed and built by AMJ for nickel recovery systems. At the time we were working in electrodialysis (1974), AMJ was engaged in further development work with Special Products under a secrecy agreement. 

After the removal of arsenic, the nickel sulfate-sulfuric acid solution passes to nickel recovery and acid treatment. Nickel is conventionally recovered by the evaporation of the electrolyte to concentrate and crystallize the nickel sulfate [25]. 

Manganese causes few problems with nickel recovery, being almost totally left in solution during sulfide precipitation and partially so during mixed hydroxide precipitation. 

The EMEW nickel recovery technology has been demonstrated on a wide variety of byproduct and waste streams containing nickel including ... 

Fig.3.3 Effect of the atomic ratio of C/O in higher level on nickel recovery.

It was observed that recovery of all metals increased with increase in coke during smelting (Table II). Copper and nickel recovery increased from 75.7% and 77.5% to 96.7% and 97.2% respectively with increase in coke from 5% to 15% in the charge. The cobalt, iron and manganese recovery was found almost nil at 5% coke, but increased to 88.8%, 90.4% and 4.66% respectively using 15% coke during smelting. 

J. M. Floyd, D. S. Conochie, "Nickel Recovery from Slags". Paper to the Extractive Metallurgy Symposium, Melbourne, 1975, 9 pp... 

Selective stripping and recovery of Ni(ll) from a real effluent coming from the Thai stainless steel industry by HFSLM LfX 860-1 87% nickel recovery in the strip 1 mg L Ni remaining in the feed solution, below the legislation limits Lothongkum et al. (2009)... 

Jin, G.-P., Y. Fu, X.-C. Bao, X.-S. Feng, Y. Wang, and W.-H. Liu. Electrochemically mediated atom transfer radical polymerization of iminodiacetic acid-functionalized poly(glycidyl methacrylatejgrafted at carbon fibers for nano-nickel recovery from spent electroless nickel plating baths. J. Appl. Electrochem. 44, 2014 621-629. 

Table XV. ELM System for Nickel Recovery from Electroplating Solutions (4)...

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