Advances In Hydrometallurgy

The development of new technologies and the increasing demand for mineral resources from emerging countries are responsible for significant tensions in the pricing of non-ferrous metals. Some metals have become strategic and critical because they are used in many technological applications such as flat panel TVs (indium), solar panel cells (indium), lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (lithium, cobalt), magnets (rare earth elements, such as neodymium and dysprosium), scintillators (rare earths), and aviation and medical applications (titanium); their availabilities remain limited. The secured supply of these metals is crucial to continue producing and exporting these technologies, and because the specific properties of these metals make them essential and difficult to substitute for a given industrial application. Hydrometallurgy have the advantages of being able to process low-grade ores, to allow better control of co-products, and have a lower environmental impact providing that the hydrometallurgical route is optimized and cheap. The need to develop sustainable, efficient, and cheap processes to extract metals from complex and poor polymetallic matrices is real. The aim of this book was to highlight recent advances related to hydrometallurgy to face new challenges in metal production.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Hydrometallurgy" that was published in Metals

"This book provides a college-level overview of chemical processing of metals in water-based solutions, in the field that is known as hydrometallurgy"--

The development of new technologies and the increasing demand for mineral resources from emerging countries are responsible for significant tensions in the pricing of non-ferrous metals. Some metals have become strategic and critical because they are used in many technological applications such as flat panel TVs (indium), solar panel cells (indium), lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (lithium, cobalt), magnets (rare earth elements, such as neodymium and dysprosium), scintillators (rare earths), and aviation and medical applications (titanium); their availabilities remain limited. The secured supply of these metals is crucial to continue producing and exporting these technologies, and because the specific properties of these metals make them essential and difficult to substitute for a given industrial application. Hydrometallurgy have the advantages of being able to process low-grade ores, to allow better control of co-products, and have a lower environmental impact providing that the hydrometallurgical route is optimized and cheap. The need to develop sustainable, efficient, and cheap processes to extract metals from complex and poor polymetallic matrices is real. The aim of this book was to highlight recent advances related to hydrometallurgy to face new challenges in metal production.

This is a Special Issue of Metals devoted to aspects of Advances in Mineral Processing and Hydrometallurgy. This includes a global call for article submissions that also included Characterization along with Recycling and Waste Minimization. As such, both primary and recycled aspects will be considered. Possible specific topics included Mineralogy, Geometallurgy, Thermodynamics, Kinetics, Comminution, Classification, Physical Separations, Liquid-Solid Separations, Leaching, Solvent Extraction, Ion Exchange, Activated Carbon, Precipitation, Reduction, Process Economics and Process Control. Suggested application areas were in Gold, Silver, PGM's, Aluminum, Copper, Zinc, Lead, Nickel, and Titanium. Critical Metals articles on topics such as Lithium, Antimony Tellurium, Gallium, Germanium, Cobalt, Graphite, Indium, and Rare Earth were also welcome. As such, this Special Issue of Metals was well supported by diverse submissions and the final publication of high-quality peer-reviewed articles.

This book is based on the undergraduate and MSc courses in hydrometallurgy which Professor A R Burkin gave from 1961 until he retired in 1988. It is divided into two sections. The first deals with the fundamental chemical and physical principles on which the technology is based. In the second, processes which are used for the production of individual metals are described, in terms of those principles where appropriate.

The past and future of hydrometallurgical advances are reviewed.

Hydrometallurgy is one of the main routes for obtaining metals that are needed for society development and for our everyday life. Chapter One presents the basics of hydrometallurgy, namely its main stages leaching, purification and/or concentration of pregnant leach solutions (PLSs), and metals' recovery. Chapter Two focuses on the gold extraction processes that involve the use or addition of industrial grade oxygen to optimise the processes. In particular, it looks at how oxygen can be used to increase the throughput and/or gold recovery and make the processes more flexible. Chapter Three gives an overview of the microbially-mediated metal transformations in which iron oxides potentially provide an applicable biotechnological method for efficient removal of pollutants from ground waters and wastewaters. Chapter Four assesses the hydrometallurgical process based on leaching, deironization, and purification of bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide salt including RE components.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Recent Advances in Hydro- and Biohydrometallurgy that was published in Minerals

This book covers various metallurgical topics, viz. roasting of sulfide minerals, matte smelting, slag, reduction of oxides and reduction smelting, interfacial phenomena, steelmaking, secondary steelmaking, role of halides in extraction of metals, refining, hydrometallurgy and electrometallurgy. Each chapter is illustrated with appropriate examples of applications of the technique in extraction of some common, reactive, rare or refractory metal together with worked out problems explaining the principle of the operation.