Filtration study for separation of solid particles from slurry generated in hydrometallurgical processing of ores and concentrates

Abstract

Hydrometallurgical processes are now gaining importance with the depletion of high grade reserve of ores and concentrates. Such materials can not be processed econom-ically by the pyrometallurgical processes due to high energy consumption. In the hydrometallurgical processes, the low and complex ores are processed to recover metallic values in the form of salt/ metal followiing leaching, solvent extraction, precipitation, electrolysis etc. In this proces, the separation of solid from the liquid is an important unit operation for the development of the process. The slurry obtained in leaching or preci-pitation needs to be treated for the separation of the solid from the leach liquor before proceeding to metal recovery by solvent extraction, ion exchange, electrolysis etc. This can be achieved with the applicaion of various available techniques such as sedimentation, centrifuga-tion, bulk-flotation, hydro-cycloning etc. Sedimentation followed by filtration is the widely used industrially important techniques for the separation of solids from slurry. It includes cake filtration, thickening; floccu-lation and deliquoring of cakes.