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Zinc Precipitation from Ammonia Leaching Solutions of Electric Arc Furnace Dust by Carbon Dioxide

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Abstract

Recovery of zinc and safe disposal of electric arc furnace dust (EAFD) is an urgent problem. Ammonia–ammonium bicarbonate solutions can selectively leach zinc from EAFD. However, the method for zinc precipitation from leachate concerns quality of zinc products and efficiency of the process. Recently, precipitation of zinc by using gaseous CO2 as precipitant attracted wide attention by industry. To fully develop its industrial application, the optimal conditions of zinc precipitation from Zn-ammonia solutions by adding gaseous CO2 were investigated. The variation of CO2 absorption efficiency, alkalinity, and total ammonia during zinc recovery process was studied. The properties of zinc-precipitating products were systematically analyzed. Under the optimized zinc precipitating conditions, 80% of zinc was recovered as basic carbonate of hydrozincite (Ζn5(CO3)2(OH)6). During the process, CO2 absorption efficiency dropped to 32.4%, alkalinity and total ammonia decreased 2 mol/L and 0.6 mol/L, respectively. High-grade zinc-precipitating products of Zn5(CO3)2(OH)6 were obtained, which could thermally decompose to ZnO in temperature region 200–290 °C. The zinc precipitate particles were 2D plate-structured flakes and further agglomerated into 3D irregular spherical particles and columnar structures. The results will provide valuable parameters for industrial treatment of EAFD.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank the College of Environment and Ecology of Chongqing University and CISDI Thermal & Environmental Engineering Co., Ltd., for their research facilities, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51209240), Technology Innovation and Application Demonstration of Chongqing Science and Technology Planning Project (Project No. cstc2018jscx-msybX0308), and Technology foresight and system innovation of Chongqing science and technology planning projects (Project No. cstc2021jsyj-zzysbAX0050).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environment and Ecology, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400045, People’s Republic of China

    Lingqiao Guo, Qiang An, Zhengbo Li, Shuman Deng, Laisheng Zhang & Ningjie Jin

  2. CISDI Thermal & Environmental Engineering Co., Ltd, Chongqing, 4001120, People’s Republic of China

    Lingqiao Guo & Lei Luo

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  1. Lingqiao Guo
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Contributions

LG contributed to conceptualization, methodology, investigation, validation, and writing-original draft. QA contributed to conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, and supervision. ZL contributed to writing-original draft, formal analysis, visualization, and resources. SD contributed to formal analysis, writing-original draft, editing, and supervision. LL contributed to resources, investigation, formal analysis, validation, and supervision. LZ contributed to formal analysis and data curation. NJ contributed to visualization, writing-review, and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qiang An.

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The contributing editor for this article was Zhi Sun.

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Guo, L., An, Q., Li, Z. et al. Zinc Precipitation from Ammonia Leaching Solutions of Electric Arc Furnace Dust by Carbon Dioxide. J. Sustain. Metall. 9, 896–907 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40831-023-00695-0

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