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1 Introduction

This document provides an overview of the history and development of pressure hydrometallurgy. It discusses how the process was pioneered in the late 19th century through early experiments leaching bauxite with sodium hydroxide under pressure. It progressed through the 20th century with major developments including the commercialization of the Bayer process for aluminum production, and the discovery of pressure leaching processes for extracting nickel, copper, zinc, and other metals from sulfide ores and concentrates. Recent advances include applying these pressure leaching technologies to refractory gold ores and directly treating zinc sulfide concentrates without prior roasting. The document concludes that pressure hydrometallurgy remains an important and developing technology for the future of metal

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Miguel Torres
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61 views

1 Introduction

This document provides an overview of the history and development of pressure hydrometallurgy. It discusses how the process was pioneered in the late 19th century through early experiments leaching bauxite with sodium hydroxide under pressure. It progressed through the 20th century with major developments including the commercialization of the Bayer process for aluminum production, and the discovery of pressure leaching processes for extracting nickel, copper, zinc, and other metals from sulfide ores and concentrates. Recent advances include applying these pressure leaching technologies to refractory gold ores and directly treating zinc sulfide concentrates without prior roasting. The document concludes that pressure hydrometallurgy remains an important and developing technology for the future of metal

Uploaded by

Miguel Torres
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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New Era Pressure Hydrometallurgy

1. Introduction
Fathi Habashi

Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and Materials Engineering

Laval University, Quebec City, Canada [email protected]

Bishop Franois de Laval


(1623-1708) 1663 Seminary 1852 University

Quebec City

Pressure hydrometallurgy
Pressure hydrometallurgy is nearly

hundred and fifty years old. It is applied for leaching of ores or concentrates and for the precipitation of metals or oxides from leach solutions.

Equipment used has undergone tremendous changes. The first autoclave used by Bayer was a horizontal reactor 1 m diameter and about 2 m long.

Laterite project in Madagascar 2010

5 Titanium-clad autoclaves, each 40 m long and 7 m diameter

Vladimir Nikolayevitch Ipatieff (1867(1867-1952) professor of chemistry at the Imperial Military College in Saint Petersburg in 1900 started a series of studies on numerous hydrothermal reactions under pressure.

At about that time, also in Saint Petersburg, Karl Josef Bayer (1847(1847-1904) an Austrian chemist working in a chemical factory to prepare aluminium hydroxide for mordanting textiles before dyeing, studied in 1892 the leaching of bauxite by NaOH at 170C and under pressure in an autoclave to obtain sodium aluminate solution from which pure Al(OH)3 would be precipitated by seeding.

The process immediately displaced the

pyrometallurgical process of Le Chatelier that was used at that time and became the largest pressure leaching process in the world.

In 1927, Friedrich August Henglein (1893-1968) in Germany treated an aqueous suspension of ZnS at 180C with O2 under 2000 kPa, converting it within into zinc sulfate. The work was done in connection with purifying coke oven gas from H2S.

ZnSO4 solution

H2S-Free gas Reactor Coke oven gas ZnS slurry Pressure Leaching
Oxygen

ZnS(s) + 2 O2(aq) ZnSO4(aq)

In 1946, the Chemical Construction Corporation in New York City had some problems in the removal of carbon monoxide impurity from synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen for ammonia synthesis

This problem was given to Felix A. Schaufelberger (1921-2009)a young graduate from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland who had joined Stamford Research Laboratories in Connecticut a year before. Towards the end of 1948, Schaufelberger succeeded in precipitating pure copper from sulfate solution by reduction with hydrogen in quantitative yield. He had also prepared the first samples of nickel and of cobalt metal powder.

It was also during this period that a new look at the old work was considered by Canadian metallurgist Frank A. Forward (1902-1972) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for leaching a nickel-copper ore.

The nickel powder prepared by Schaufelberger, led to adopting this technology.

It was Vladimir N. Mackiw (1923-2001) who made the discovery that copper could be precipitated from the leach solution as copper sulfide prior to nickel recovery, when the solution was boiled at atmospheric pressure, due to the presence of trithionate and thiosulfate ions.

This opened the way for direct nickel

reduction from purified leach solution. A by-product of this process was (NH4)2SO4 which was marketed as a fertilizer. The process has been successfully in operation by Sherritt-Gordon since then, using a large number of autoclaves, and now used worldwide.

From 1960 to 2001 all Canadian nickel currency was produced by this technology

To

supply cobalt to the Korean War efforts in 1950-53, the initial two projects at Calera, Utah, and at Fredericktown, Missouri, were rushed unduly without adequate piloting of process equipment. The Freeport Sulphur Company contracted for the development of an acid pressure leaching process for laterite of Moa Bay in Cuba.

Nickel from laterites in Cuba

10

RECENT ADVANCES
Treatment

gold ores. Treat of zinc sulfide concentrates directly without roasting.

of refractory

PRESSURE HYDROMETALLURGY

LEACHING

PRECIPITATION
y

In absence of Oxygen Bauxite Kaolinite Laterite Ilmenite Wolframite Scheelite Arsenides Antimondes

In Presence of Oxygen Uranium oxides Sulfides Disulfides Selenides Tellurides

By H2 Nickel Cobalt UO 2

By SO2 Copper

H2 S Nickel Cobalt

11

Looking back . and looking to the future ..

Pressure hydrometallurgy is the technology of the future

12

THANKS

13

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