Abstract
A novel hydrometallurgical procedure is described for the recovery of zinc from zinc silicate ores which have high acid-soluble zinc and silica contents. The process is conducted in a continuous concurrent manner at atmospheric pressure and temperatures of 50 to 95°C. The ore is leached with spent electrolyte from an electrolytic zinc plant to a final pH of approximately 2 to dissolve zinc and the soluble silica. The pH of the leach solution is then raised to 4 to 5.5, using a neutralizing agent, to precipitate and coagulate the colloidal silica. Finally the coagulated silica is filtered from the solution and washed. The resulting filtrate is treated conventionally for electrolytic zinc production. This process solves in a simple way the difficult problem of precipitating large concentrations of colloidal silica(e.g. 25 g SiO2 per liter) in a readily filterable and easily washed form. The process has been tested at up to the 5 tons per day scale on ores containing willemite and on a laboratory scale with ore containing hemimorphite and smith-sonite.
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