Abstract
Indium and silver are technologically important, critical metals, and in the majority of cases, they are extracted as a by-product of another carrier metal. The importance of indium has seen recent growth, and for technological reasons, these metals can be found in industrial residues from primary zinc production, such as the iron precipitate—jarosite. To secure the supply of such metals in Europe, and with the idea of a circular economy and the sustainable use of raw materials, the recycling of such industrial residues is coming into focus. Due to the low value of jarosite, the focus must lie simultaneously on the recovery of valuable metals and the production of high-quality products in order to pursue an economical process. The objective of this article is to give the fundamentals for the development of a successful process to extract the minor elements from roasted jarosite. As such, we use thermodynamic calculations to show the behavior of indium and silver, leading to a recommendation for the required conditions for a successful extraction process. In summary, the formation of chlorine compounds shows high potential to meet the challenge of simultaneously recovering these metals together with zinc at the lowest possible energy input.
Highlights
Recycling rates have increased in recent decades, but this is mainly due to the reutilization of end-of-life products and their better collection logistics
The The partial pressures of the forms of indium and silver were were very low, the gaseous partial pressures ofmetallic the metallic forms of indium and silver veryand low,were and not suitable for extraction via thevia vapor phase phase underunder moderate temperature regimes
In the case of industrial residues such as the stability region of InCl to a lower Cl2(g) partial pressure, and at a temperature of 1415 C
Summary
Recycling rates have increased in recent decades, but this is mainly due to the reutilization of end-of-life products and their better collection logistics. A decrease in the level of minable primary resources, and stricter environmental legislation regulating, for instance, land filling, different industrial residues have become a focal point of the recycling industry. As the valuable metal content when compared to various end-of-life products or primary ore concentrates is in most cases drastically lower, the requirements of newly-developed recycling processes are more demanding. This results in a strategy to develop concepts capable of the simultaneous extraction of metals and generation of products with an “added value”. The zinc industry is one of the base metal industries carrying a broad variety of accompanying side elements and is the focus of this research—in particular, its iron precipitate residue. Zinc ore concentrate includes several metals, such as indium, defined as a critical metal by the European
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