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Recovery of valuable metals from copper slag

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Abstract

The copper smelting process produces plenty of copper slag every year, which is a hazardous solid waste, but a secondary resource. In the present study, the extraction of copper, nickel, and cobalt from copper slag was investigated through the process of sulfation roasting–water leaching and the process of sulfation roasting–sulfate decomposition roasting–water leaching respectively. Compared with the process of sulfation roasting–water leaching, the process of sulfation roasting–sulfate decomposition roasting–water leaching is a better choice, which could not only get almost the same leaching of copper, nickel, and cobalt as the former process, but has a lower leaching of iron and aluminum. For the process of sulfation roasting–sulfate decomposition roasting–water leaching, the leaching of Cu, Ni, and Co reached up to 74.2%, 71.1%, and 69.6% respectively, under the optimal conditions including sulfation roasted with 80 wt% sulfuric acid addition at 200 °C for 60 min and sulfate decomposition roasted at 650 °C for 60 min, followed by water leached at 90 °C for 30 min with a liquid–solid ratio of 2 ml/g. The leaching of Fe and Al was only 4.9% and 17.6%.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51974369) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2016JJ2142).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Metallurgy and Environment, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Changda Zhang, Bin Hu, Mingyu Wang & Xuewen Wang

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, 49931, USA

    Huaguang Wang

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  1. Changda Zhang
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  2. Bin Hu
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  3. Huaguang Wang
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  4. Mingyu Wang
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  5. Xuewen Wang
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Correspondence to Mingyu Wang.

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Zhang, C., Hu, B., Wang, H. et al. Recovery of valuable metals from copper slag. Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration 37, 1241–1251 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-020-00224-7

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