Many hydrometallurgy
methods, including chemical precipitation,
ion exchange, solvent extraction, and adsorption, have been used to
recover vanadium from vanadium solution, but the final step of these
methods involved precipitation with ammonium salts, high concentrations
of which are harmful to the environment. The key point is to find
a new compound to replace ammonium salts without reducing the vanadium
precipitation efficiency. The adsorption process of vanadium with
glutamic acid is investigated. The effects of experimental factors,
including dosage of glutamic acid, reaction temperature, concentration
of H
2
SO
4
, and reaction time, on the adsorption
process are investigated. The results show that nearly 91.66% vanadium
is adsorbed under the following reaction conditions: reaction temperature
of 90 °C, H
2
SO
4
concentration of 20 g/L,
glutamic acid dosage at
n
(glu)/
n
(V) = 3.0:1, and reaction time of 60 min. The response surface methodology
is applied to optimize the reaction conditions. The analysis results
indicate that the reaction temperature has the greatest effect on
the adsorption efficiency of vanadium and the influence of experimental
factors follows the order: reaction temperature > dosage of glutamic
acid to vanadium > reaction time > concentration of H
2
SO
4
. The pseudo-second-order model is selected to describe
well
the adsorption kinetic behavior, and the thermodynamic analysis results
indicate that the adsorption process of vanadium is unspontaneous
and exothermic. The results will be useful for further applications
of glutamic acid, and they provide a bright future for vanadium recovery.