Hydrometallurgical Leaching of Copper Flash Furnace Electrostatic Precipitator Dust for the Separation of Copper from Bismuth and Arsenic

Abstract

Flash furnace electrostatic precipitator dust (FF-ESP dust) is a recycle stream in some primary copper production facilities. This dust contains high amounts of copper. In some cases, the FF-ESP dust contains elevated levels of bismuth and arsenic, both of which cause problems during the electrorefining stages of copper production. Because of this, methods for separation of copper from bismuth and arsenic in FF-ESP dust are necessary. Hydrometallurgical leaching using a number of lixiviants, including sulfuric acid, sulfurous acid, sodium hydroxide, and water, were explored. Pourbaix diagrams of copper, bismuth, and arsenic were used to determine sets of conditions which would thermodynamically separate copper from bismuth and arsenic. The data indicate that water provides the best overall separation between copper and both bismuth and arsenic. Sodium hydroxide provided a separation between copper and arsenic. Sulfurous acid provided a separation between copper and bismuth. Sulfuric acid did not provide any separations between copper and bismuth or copper and arsenic.

Recovery and Recycling of Valuable Metals

“…Seventeen articles have been published in this Special Issue of Metals, encompassing the fields of mineral processing and extractive metallurgy [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. These articles cover a wide range of topics in the field and provide some ideas for active researchers who are working on the production of valuable metals from primary and secondary resources.…”

Separation and Stabilization of Arsenic from Lead Slime by the Combination of Acid Leaching and Forming Scorodite

“…However, the content of arsenic in borosilicate glass is strictly limited [23]. Even though efficient arsenic fixation was achieved, the vitrification process has a high cost due to its high energy consumption, and does not have the conditions for large-scale market promotion [24]. Chemical stabilization methods forming the chemical stable phase of arsenic by hydrometallurgy have been studied extensively around the world [25,26].…”

Hydrometallurgical Recycling of Copper Anode Furnace Dust for a Complete Recovery of Metal Values

“…The leaching of the dust takes place in acidic (commonly in H 2 SO 4 and HCl) and alkaline solutions (commonly in NaOH, but others, such as NH 4 CO 3 , are studied as well) [28]. The leaching efficiency in H 2 SO 4 varies from 80 to 100% for copper and from 85 to 95% for zinc [14,17,18,21,22,29].…”