Journal
MINERAL PROCESSING AND EXTRACTIVE METALLURGY-TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTIONS OF MINING AND METALLURGY
Volume 130, Issue 3, Pages 209-217Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/25726641.2019.1591067
Keywords
Hydrometallurgy; copper; nitrate removal; electrodialysis
Categories
Funding
- CYTED Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnologia para el Desarrollo
- Asociacion de Universidades Grupo Montevideo
- USACH [1555LD]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The study found that high temperature, high flow rate, and low current densities favor the performance of electrodialysis in removing nitrates from copper-containing aqueous acid leach solutions. Under optimum operating conditions, current efficiencies were high, demonstrating the potential of electrodialysis as an alternative technology for nitrate removal.
The north of Chile is characterised by a large content of caliche minerals which represent high amounts of sodium and potassium nitrates. The presence of these nitrates, in copper-containing aqueous acid leach solutions, are responsible for serious problems in the hydrometallurgical extraction of copper-from-ore. The main problems are: extractant losses due to nitration and/ or hydrolysis and negative effects upon bioleaching microorganisms such as lower growth cell and higher microbial lag times. On the basis of these problems, the objective of this work was to evaluate electrodialysis (ED) as an alternative method for removal for nitrates from copper-containing aqueous acid leach solutions. For this purpose, ED experiments in a three-compartment cell using both real and synthetic solutions at different current densities, flow rate and temperature were studied. It was found that high temperature, high flow rate and low current densities favour the ED performance, under the range investigated. Thus, optimum operating conditions were found at 40 degrees C, 120 Lh(-1) and 150 A m(-2), where current efficiencies (CE) of 96.4% and 89.4% were obtained for synthetic and real catholyte, respectively. Likewise, the energy consumption (EC) was 25% lesser (0.75 kWh kg(-1)) with real catholyte versus 1.01 k Wh kg(-1) consumed using synthetic catholyte. These results demonstrated that electrodialysis could be applied for removal of nitrates from copper-containing aqueous acid leach solutions as an alternative technology.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available