A Flow-Through Reaction Cell for Studying Minerals Leaching by In-Situ Synchrotron Powder X-ray Diffraction

Fatemeh Nikkhou,Idowu A Adegoke,Xizhi Yao,Qinfen Gu,Justin A Kimpton,Fang Xia

doi:10.3390/min10110990

Fatemeh Nikkhou, Idowu A Adegoke + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/min10110990

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Journal: Minerals	Publication Date: Nov 8, 2020
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Murdoch University, Australian Synchrotron

Abstract

A flow-through reaction cell has been developed for studying minerals leaching by in-situ time-resolved powder X-ray diffraction, allowing for a better understanding of the leaching mechanisms and kinetics. The cell has the capability of independent control of temperature (up to 95 °C) and flow rate (>0.5 mL min−1) for atmospheric pressure leaching. It was successfully tested at the powder diffraction beamline at the Australian Synchrotron. Galena powder was leached in a citrate solution under flow-through condition at a flow rate of 0.5 mL min−1, while diffraction patterns were collected during the entire leaching process, showing rapid galena dissolution without the formation of secondary mineral phases. The flow-through cell can be used to study leaching processes of other ore minerals.

Highlights

A clear understanding of the mechanism and kinetics of mineral leaching is important for further optimization of leaching parameters [1,2,3,4]
There are a number of in-situ techniques, capable of studying the solution phase by X-ray absorption spectroscopy [12] and Raman spectroscopy [13], and solid phase by transmission electron microscopy [14], atomic force microscopy [15], neutron diffraction [16,17,18], and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) [19,20,21,22]
A flow-through cell was designed for in-situ PXRD studies of minerals leaching

Summary

Introduction

A clear understanding of the mechanism and kinetics of mineral leaching is important for further optimization of leaching parameters [1,2,3,4]. In-situ PXRD in the presence of an aqueous solution can reveal the phase evolution of the crystalline materials and has been applied extensively in materials chemistry for elucidating crystallization mechanisms of hydrothermal materials syntheses [23,24,25,26,27,28] This technique has been applied in studying mineral leaching, but mostly under static conditions using glass capillary tubes [8,9,10,11]. For in-situ PXRD studies of mineral leaching, flow-through reaction cells are useful for achieving a wider range of solid/solution ratios to mimic various types of leaching conditions. The peristaltic pump (Thermo Scientific FH 100) has a flow capacity of 0.5–300 mL min−1

In-Situ PXRD of Galena Leaching

In-Situ

OFor on the polymorphic phase transition from orthorhombic trigonalcitrate

Conclusions