Selenium minerals and the recovery of selenium from copper refinery anode slimes

Abstract

Selenium (Se) was first observed in 1817 in a laboratory (Greenwood et al., 1984). The discovery of selenium was made by the Swedish chemist J.J. Berzelius and J.G. Gahn, who isolated selenium from a red residue in sulphuric acid from pyrite mined at Fahlun, Sweden. Selenium was named from the Greek word selene (moon), since it resembled tellurium, which had been discovered a few years earlier and named from the Latin word tellus (Earth).After the first observation of selenium in the laboratory, selenium received considerable interest. In 1954, E.P. Kaiser pointed out that Se is enriched in sulphide ores and often associated with Bi, Co, Sn etc. (Kaiser 1954). In 1959, Hawley and Nichol investigated selenium in Canadian sulphide minerals, and presented the content of selenium in sulphide from several deposits of different types. They also proposed that Se is enriched in lowtemperature hydrothermal pyrite (Hawley and Nichol, 1959). The thermodynamic conditions for forming native selenium and selenium minerals in sedimentary rocks were discussed, as well as geochemical behaviour of selenium near the oxidation zones of sulphides in the 1970s (Howard III, 1977;Zhu et al., 2003). Zhu et al. examined the morphology, features, and genesis of native selenium from Yutangba, Enshi City, Hubei Province, China in 2004, and pointed out, from the different forms of native Se, that selenium can be activated,transformed, remobilized, and enriched at sites such as in the unsaturated subsurface zone or in the saturated zone (Zhu et al., 2005). The transport and deposition of selenium in felsic volcanic-hosted massive sulphide deposits of the Yukon Territory, Canada was studied and reported by LaytonMatthews et al. (2005).Selenium is a comparatively rare and greatly dispersed element. The average selenium content in the Earth's crust is considered to vary between 0.05 and 0.09 g/g (Lakin 1972;Greenwood et al., 1984;Jiajun et al., 1997). Elemental selenium is seldom found in nature; industrially, selenium is obtained as a by-product of mining other metals such as copper, iron, and lead (Fishbein 1983;Wen and Qiu 1999). It is produced primarily from the anode slimes of copper refineries (Butterman et al., 2004). There are various reports in the literature on the treatment of copper anode slimes to recover selenium (Hoffmann 1989; Cooper 1990).In this paper, we provide an overview of selenium minerals, as well as the recovery of selenium from copper refinery anode slimes. Our focus is on the occurrence of selenium minerals and selenium deposits. We also examined the research work reported in the literature on the treatment of copper refinery anode slimes for the recovery of selenium. In 1956, Thompson et al. discovered feltySelenium minerals and the recovery of selenium from copper refinery anode slimes by C. Wang*, S. Li*, H. Wang*, and J. Fu* Since it was first identified in 1817, selenium has received considerable interest. Native selenium and a few selenium minerals were discovered several decades later. With the increasing numbe...

Characterization of Two Sludges from a Pyrometallurgical Copper Smelting Complex for Designing a Se and Pb Recovery Proposal

“…The content of valuable metals in both wastes (SC and SS) along with the increasing cost of waste disposal on controlled landfill, increasingly restrictive legislation and their potential risk to human health and the environment, suggest that efforts should be focused on valorising these wastes. Taking into account the physical, chemical and mineralogy characterization and the consulted bibliographic, these residues could be an important secondary source of Se and Pb [15,19,32,[53][54][55]. The recovery of these as metals with 99.99% purity is proposed, in order to make higher profits and thus contributing to the circular economy of these elements in the copper production process.…”

“…Copper anode slime is the main source of selenium, since there are no mineral reserves. There are several processes that nowadays are being applied at copper refineries whose advantages and disadvantages are summarised in Table S2 [36,[53][54][55][56][57]. On the other hand, Pb is usually extracted together with Zn from the dust generated in an electric furnace, which is one of the main secondary sources of Pb [22,[58][59][60][61].…”

Environmental Impacts of Selenium Contamination: A Review on Current-Issues and Remediation Strategies in an Aqueous System

“…Selenium is volatilized as selenium dioxide and captured or collected in the scrubbers for recovery at the specified temperature. The scrubbing of the off-gases results in the complete recovery of the selenium from the gas stream [194]. Equation (3) below describes the process:…”

“…One advantage of this process is the reduction of selenious acid to elemental selenium by sulfur dioxide produced in the roasting process and regeneration of the sulphuric acid initially consumed in the roasting process [194]. One of the main challenges in selenium resource recovery is its dependence on refining electrolytic copper.…”

High Recovery of Selenium from Kesterite‐Based Photovoltaic Cells

“…In this CIGS PV, metals were recovered by thermal oxidation and solvent extraction or electrodeposition . Selenium could be recovered by several processes such as sulfating roast, soda roast, oxidizing roast or chlorination processes . In the case of CIGS material, the absorber was submitted to thermal oxidation for separation of selenium dioxide at 800 °C for 1 hour in an oxygen‐containing atmosphere …”