Abstract
Dissolution kinetics of tellurium from gold concentrate during alkaline sulphide leaching
Highlights
Tellurium, a scarce and valuable element with relatively low abundance of 0.001–0.005 g/t in the Earth’s crust (Kavlak and Graedel, 2013; Makuei and Senanayake, 2018), is widely used in the electronics industry, metallurgy, communications, aerospace, energy, medicine, and other fields
Samples with average particle sizes of 57.58, 44.52, 28.66, 17.77, and 10.23 μm were leached in a solution containing 80 g/L Na2S plus 30 g/L NaOH at 80°C using a stirring speed of 500 r/min
A tellurium extraction of 58.56% was obtained for the 57.58 μm size fraction after leaching for 180 minutes, while 75.77% was obtained for the 17.77 μm size fraction
Summary
A scarce and valuable element with relatively low abundance of 0.001–0.005 g/t in the Earth’s crust (Kavlak and Graedel, 2013; Makuei and Senanayake, 2018), is widely used in the electronics industry, metallurgy, communications, aerospace, energy, medicine, and other fields. The bismuth or antimony compounds of tellurium are excellent refrigerating materials which can be employed in radars and underwater missiles (Siciliano et al, 2009). Lead and bismuth tellurides are often used to make photosensitive materials (Tsiulyanu et al, 2005). About 90% of tellurium production is from copper anode slimes from the electrolytic refining of blister copper, and the remainder as a by-product of bismuth and lead processing (Makuei and Senanayake, 2018). Due to heavy losses of tellurium during mineral processing and smelting, the current routes for tellurium production as a metallurgical by-product cannot meet the demand. The direct recovery of tellurium from tellurium-bearing ores has attracted increasing attention. There are few studies on the extraction of tellurium from other tellurium-bearing ores, and even fewer on gold-telluride ores
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