Comprehensive Recovery From Zinc Oxide, Indium, Germanium, Practical Applications

A new method to recover indium and germanium comprehensively from zinc oxide dust was researched in this paper. Because of the leaching slag of zinc hydrometallurgy was dealt by rotary furnace, indium, germanium and the other valuable metals were riched in zinc oxide dust. So, it was researched in this paper of how to recover comprehensively the valuable metals from zinc oxidedust.This paper is based on the current conditions of extracting indium and germanium of domestic and overseas. It was analyzed in this paper of recovering valuable metals comprehensively from zinc oxide dust from the aspects of kinetics and thermodynamics. For the characters of the raw materials situation, based on a lot of experiments, we represented a new method to recover zinc, germanium and indium from zinc oxide dust.It was done the experiments to extract indium and germanium from zinc oxide dust in this research. The first step, it was about the 80 percent of zinc and germanium went into the solution by acid leaching, the second step, the indium was riched in the second acid leaching. It was investigated that the factors of temperature, leaching time, acidity, which affect the leaching rate of extracting of germanium and indium. The results show that, the optimize conditions of extracting germanium were, the leaching temperature of zinc oxide dust is at about 60～70℃, the leaching react time is 1～1. 5 hour, pH is at 2～3, the gallic acid ratio is 25～45, the gallic deposition of germanium react time is 20 minutes, the burning temperature is at 550～600℃, the optimum conditions of extracting indium were, the extracting organic phase to aqueous phase is 1 to 1.5～2, temperature is below 30℃, acid washed the extracting organic phase to aqueous phase is 4 to 1, the reextracting organic phase aqueous phase is 15～30 to 1.From the above, the merits of extracting germanium and indium from zinc oxide dust were , the first is it can recover the valuable metals comprehensively, the second is the grade of germanium concentrate is 15 percent, it can attain the standard of super of corporation standard, the third is the process is simple, the fourth is compared with the other methods, the cost is low, the fifth is it can not take the other impurity to the procedure, the sixth is it can combine the current procedure easily, the seventh is it can realize comprehensively the economic and environmental benefits. So from the above, the process is the optimize process to recover zinc, germanium and indium from zinc oxide dust.