Abstract
Citric acid has been proved to be the most effective organic acid for nickel extraction from nickel lateritic ores. Citric acid can be produced from fungal metabolism by utilizing several types of carbon source as fungal nutrient. In the current experiment, production of metabolic citric acid from metabolism of Aspergillus niger by using corn starch as a carbon source was investigated. The application of the citric acid produced in the leaching of nickel from Indonesian saprolitic ore under atmospheric pressure was also conducted. The optimum citric acid concentration (i.e. around 0.05 M) can be produced by using 5% w/v of corn starch after 5 days incubation of A. niger, 30°C of temperature, shaker speed of 120 rpm, and 3% v/v of methanol as an additive. The metal leaching of Indonesian saprolitic ore was conducted using <75μm of ore particle size, 5% w/v of pulp density and 200 rpm of shaker speed at different leaching temperatures (30°C, 40°C, and 60°C). The results showed that the optimum nickel recovery (around 40%) can be reached after 3 days of leaching process at 40°C. It was also found that the use of metabolic citric acid was more effective for nickel leaching compared to the use of chemical citric acid at similar citric acid concentration (i.e. 0.05 M). It can be concluded that the metabolic citric acid produced from corn starch by A. niger will be an excellent leaching reagent for extracting nickel from low-grade Indonesian saprolitic ore.
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