Abstract
The high concentration of potassium in sodium aluminate solution seriously threatens the seed precipitation process and reduces the quality of alumina products, but the separation of potassium is quite difficult due to the similar chemical properties between potassium and sodium ions. In this work, a novel single-step double salt crystallization (SDSC) process with low energy consumption was proposed to remove potassium from the concentrated sodium aluminate solution using sodium sulfate, and the corresponding removal performance, kinetics and mechanism were studied. The potassium concentration decreases with the increase of additive dosage and reaction temperature, while the high caustic alkali concentration hinders the potassium removal. At 70 °C, the SDSC process exhibits a rapid crystallization and reaches an equilibrium within 60 min because of the low activation energy and weak bonding of 3 K2SO4·Na2SO4·9H2O. Under the optimum conditions, the potassium removal efficiency can achieve 85.68 %, and the potassium concentration is reduced from 120 g∙L−1 to 24.54 g⋅L−1. Finally, a cyclic utilization pathway was obtained to economically and effectively remove potassium from the sodium aluminate solution.
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