Comprehensive recovery of arsenic and antimony from arsenic-rich copper smelter dust

Jianrong Xue; Dongping Long; Hong Zhong; Shuai Wang; Lihua Liu

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125365

Comprehensive recovery of arsenic and antimony from arsenic-rich copper smelter dust

J Hazard Mater. 2021 Jul 5:413:125365. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125365. Epub 2021 Feb 9.

Authors

Jianrong Xue¹, Dongping Long², Hong Zhong³, Shuai Wang³, Lihua Liu⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China; College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Efficient and Clean Utilization of Manganese Resources, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China. Electronic address: jianrongxue@hnust.edu.cn.
² Intelligent Manufacturing Institute of HNUST, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Efficient and Clean Utilization of Manganese Resources, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.
⁴ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China.

PMID: 33930948
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.125365

Abstract

In view of reducing contaminant and recovery arsenic and antimony, a novel technology was proposed to recover arsenic and antimony from arsenic-rich copper smelter dust comprehensively. The technique route includes three stages: arsenic and antimony trioxides were leached from the copper smelter dust with hydrochloric acid; trivalent arsenic ions (As³⁺) were then reduced to less toxic simple arsenic (As) by sodium hypophosphate (NaH₂PO₂) and recovered; and stepwise recovery of antimony by SbCl₃ was achieved by the continuous distillation technique. The results indicates that the leaching efficiency of As and Sb was over 97.5% and 96.8% under conditions of initial 4.0 mol/L HCl, liquid-solid ratio (L/S) of 6:1, leaching temperature of 363 K and time of 2 h. Over 92.5% arsenic was recovered by NaH₂PO₂ reduction under the suitable conditions: 363 K, 1.5 h and 2.0 times addition of NaH₂PO₂. The recovery rate of Sb is more than 97.53% at 393 K. The distillation temperature of SbCl₃ was optimized between 463 K and 473 K. The corresponding mechanisms of the leaching and recovering of arsenic and antimony were systematically investigated and confirmed by E-pH diagram, thermodynamic calculation, arsenic speciation, composition analysis and XRD characterization.

Keywords: Antimony; Arsenic; Copper smelter dust; Leaching.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't