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

Abstract

Copper anode furnace dust is waste by-product of secondary copper production containing zinc, lead, copper, tin, iron and many other elements. Hydrometallurgical Copper Anode Furnace dust recycling method was studied theoretically by thermodynamic calculations and the proposed method was verified experimentally on a laboratory scale. The optimum condition for leaching of zinc from dust was identified to be an ambient leaching temperature, a liquid/solid ratio of 10 and H2SO4 concentration of 1 mol/L. A maximum of 98.85% of zinc was leached under the optimum experimental conditions. In the leaching step, 99.7% of lead in the form of insoluble PbSO4 was separated from the other leached metals. Solution refining was done by combination of pH adjustment and zinc powder cementation. Tin was precipitated from solution by pH adjustment to 3. Iron was precipitated out of solution after pH adjustment to 4 with efficiency 98.54%. Copper was selectively cemented out of solution (99.96%) by zinc powder. Zinc was precipitated out of solution by addition of Na2CO3 with efficiency of 97.31%. ZnO as final product was obtained by calcination of zinc carbonates.

Extraction of Lead from Hydrometallurgical Processing of Copper Shaft Flue Dust

“…Shaft flue dust (SFD) from secondary copper production mainly contains oxides of zinc, lead, tin and copper. In 2020, secondary copper production in Slovakia produced a total of 3573.57 t of dust [7]. In recent years, hydrometallurgical methods seem to be appropriate for the treatment of SFD because of the possibility of processing fine-grain-size waste; the selectivity of this method is also significant.…”

Utilization of Galvanizing Flue Dust Residue: A Sustainable Approach towards Complete Material Recycling

“…Therefore, it is necessary to look for other secondary sources with a high zinc content and to increase the EOL-RIR. The industries producing waste containing zinc include the hot-dip galvanizing of steel [8][9][10][11], secondary copper production [12,13], steel production in electric arc furnaces [14], and zinc batteries [15].…”

Zinc Evaporation from Brass Scraps in the Atmosphere of Inert Gas

“…Cupriferous wastes are, e.g., casting waste, copper smelting dusts or flotation tailings. In this area, the offered solutions with regard to zinc removal from these wastes are primarily based on pyrometallurgical [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ] and hydrometallurgical [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ] processes. In hydrometallurgical processes, various leaching materials are applied such as sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, acetic acid or ammonia solutions.…”