Abstract
Tellurium is the indispensable base material of semiconductors in solar panels. Traditional tellurium recycling, a highly complicated separation process, has exhausted reagents and energy sources whilst producing waste residue and water containing multitudinous heavy metal that is hugely harmful to the ecological environment. A clean and eco-friendly vacuum distillation-directional condensation treatment was investigated for its potential to recycle tellurium from tellurium-rich lead anode slime (TLAS). The optimal distillation temperature and response time conditions of 1173 K and 50 min were obtained based on a large number of experiments. Gasification results indicated that under the optimal conditions of distillation temperature 1173 K, constant temperature time 50 min, and system pressure 5–15 Pa, 92% of tellurium was volatilized and enriched into the condenser from TLAS. Condensate results revealed that 88% of elemental tellurium was directly recovered in the volatile matter. The appropriate gasification-condensation processes realized a clean utilization to extract tellurium and separate multi valuable metals effectively.
Highlights
The best parameters for recovering tellurium from tellurium-rich lead anode slime (TLAS) had been obtained through many empirical studies
The volatilization rate and the direct yield rate of tellurium were calculated by the Equations (7) and (8) to discuss the experimental results
A constant temperature time of 50 min can be considered as the optimal separation time of tellurium from TLAS based on the balance of direct yield and further energy consumption
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Oxidative roastingalkali leaching utilized low-temperature roasting-NaOH leaching-electrolysis to obtain metal tellurium [11] In some situations, these traditional methods both have different advantages, but the complicated flow exhausted chemical reagents and high-quality energy, and the roasted residue, the leached liquor, and the escaped gas become a more complex problem. Compared with traditional smelting methods, vacuum metallurgical technology has some advantages: efficient resource utilization, high metal recovery rate, short metallurgical process, low energy consumption, good working conditions, and considerable economic benefits. It does not generate pollutants, such as waste gas, waste water, waste residue, and other contaminants [23,24,25,26]. This work attempts to understand tellurium vacuum behavior and its further effect on the environment
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