Recovery of gallium from corundum flue dust by two-stage alkali leaching, carbonation, acid leaching and solvent extraction process

Abstract

Flue dust generated during the process of manufacturing corundum is a carrier of critical metal gallium. In this study, a process of alkali leaching-carbonation-acid leaching-solvent extraction was developed to recover and enrich gallium from corundum flue dust. Over 93% of the gallium in corundum flue dust could be recovered through a two-stage alkali leaching process, which consists of 120 min of concentrated alkali leaching in NaOH solution and a subsequent 30-min dilute alkali leaching (after dilution), with an alkali-to-ore mass ratio of 1.2:1. Liquid to solid ratios in two alkali leaching stages were 1.5:1 and 8:1, respectively. The carbonation process was employed to remove high-level Si in alkali leachate. After carbonation and HCl leaching, over 96% of gallium in the NaOH leachate could be dissolved into acid solution. After extracting gallium from the HCl leachate using N235 as extracting agent, 1% NaOH solution was used to strip gallium from the organic phase. The extraction and stripping efficiency of gallium was over 99% and 97%, respectively.