According to critical statistical studies, antimony is one of the rarest elements in the world, and global resources could be exhausted by 2050. In light of these observations, its extraction will be costly due to poor-quality ore, deep mining, remote locations, and high energy consumption. In the present study, an alkaline leaching process was carried out on stibnite concentrate to evaluate the effect of reaction parameters on the percentage of antimony extraction. The leaching efficiencies of different sulfur and hydroxide sources were studied and compared to one another to create a better understanding of the reaction process. Kinetic models were investigated to identify the reaction pathway and calculate the activation energy. The activation energy of the stibnite dissolution was assessed as 19.13 kJ/mol using a two-dimensional diffusion-reaction model. The value of activation energy indicates the quantity of energy necessary for a reaction to proceed. As expected, potassium hydroxide leaching was significantly more successful than was sodium hydroxide; however, in terms of economics, the use of sodium hydroxide was found to be more cost-efficient. Interestingly, this finding indicated that caustic leaching is still the most effective method for stibnite extraction.

中文翻译：

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辉锑矿精矿碱浸参数研究

根据重要的统计研究，锑是世界上最稀有的元素之一，到 2050 年全球资源可能会枯竭。根据这些观察，由于矿石质量差、开采深度、位置偏远，其提取成本将很高，和高能耗。在本研究中，对辉锑矿精矿进行碱浸工艺，以评估反应参数对锑提取率的影响。研究了不同硫和氢氧化物来源的浸出效率并相互比较，以更好地了解反应过程。研究动力学模型以识别反应途径并计算活化能。辉锑矿溶解的活化能评估为 19。13 kJ/mol 使用二维扩散反应模型。活化能的值表示反应进行所需的能量。正如预期的那样，氢氧化钾浸出比氢氧化钠浸出成功得多；然而，就经济性而言，发现使用氢氧化钠更具成本效益。有趣的是，这一发现表明碱浸法仍然是提取辉锑矿最有效的方法。