Vacuum Gasification-Directional Condensation for Separation of Tellurium from Lead Anode Slime

Abstract

Tellurium is the indispensable base material of semiconductors in solar panels. Traditional tellurium recycling, a highly complicated separation process, has exhausted reagents and energy sources whilst producing waste residue and water containing multitudinous heavy metal that is hugely harmful to the ecological environment. A clean and eco-friendly vacuum distillation-directional condensation treatment was investigated for its potential to recycle tellurium from tellurium-rich lead anode slime (TLAS). The optimal distillation temperature and response time conditions of 1173 K and 50 min were obtained based on a large number of experiments. Gasification results indicated that under the optimal conditions of distillation temperature 1173 K, constant temperature time 50 min, and system pressure 5–15 Pa, 92% of tellurium was volatilized and enriched into the condenser from TLAS. Condensate results revealed that 88% of elemental tellurium was directly recovered in the volatile matter. The appropriate gasification-condensation processes realized a clean utilization to extract tellurium and separate multi valuable metals effectively.

Resourceful cleaner preparation of Sb2O3 with vacuum vaporization- condensation from hazardous arsenic antimony dust

“…Vacuum metallurgy, a process manipulating system pressure to alter the volatilization and condensation properties of substances, enables the selective separation and recovery of products (Gao et al 2021). This technique enhances the thermodynamic and kinetic conditions of the reaction system, offering a streamlined process, minimal material usage (Cheng et al 2022;Ma et al 2022), and ecofriendly operation (Yang et al 2020).…”

Separation and Enrichment of Au and Ag from Lead Anode Slime by a Selective Oxidation–Vacuum Volatilization–Carbon Reduction Process

“…In 2022, the world's refined Pb production reached 12.29 million tons [1,2], and more than 20% of refined Pb was produced by electrolytic refining [3]. The output of LAS is generally 1.2-2% of that of refined Pb [4,5]. According to these industrial data, at least 0.2 million tons of lead anode slime was produced in 2022 [6].…”