UANIUM RECOVERY FROM COBALT LEACH SOLUTION IN THE DRC

摘要

Clean TeQ water designs and supplies equipment for waste and process water treatment, impurity removal and metal recovery from process streams. One of Clean TeQ Water core technology relies on Continuous Ionic Filtration (CIF). CIF provide both ion exchange and filtration equipment in which a packed bed of resins move downwards in counter flow to the liquid moving upwards. In such systems loaded resins are removed from the bottom and moved to the next column through airlifts. The technology has been successfully applied for different types of water and process treatment throughout the world. This specific case focuses on the recent results from a large scale IX-CIF plant in the DRC for removal of Uranium impurities from a Cobalt stream. This Uranium polishing plant was designed and supplied by Clean TeQ Water in cooperation with Multotec, Clean TeQ's partner in Africa. The results from site show the Uranium concentration reduced from around 40 to around 4 ppm from a 20,000 m3 per day 1.5 pH raffinate stream. The next step is for the end-user to increase the pH of the incoming raffinate (as per design) such that the outgoing Uranium concentration will reach below 1 ppm. Using such ion exchange CIF system provides a number of benefits compared to regular resin exchange systems including The ability to accept up to around 150 mg/l solids which is continuously filtered out and removed by the moving packed bed. This is substantially higher than would be acceptable for any fixed packed bed system which would require expensive pre-treatment.Limited space requirements and capex due to the combination of packed beds and counterflow. This is in contrast to fluidized or stirred reactors that require more space and potentially require long series of vessels to create similar counterflow results.Low output impurity levels and a highly concentrated waste stream (uranium strip liquor), making disposal or further processing easier. The ability to quickly adjust to changing feed flow or concentration conditions by adjusting the speed of resin flow. Clean TeQ Water applies this technology not only for Uranium removal, but also for the recovery from process water and tailings of valuable metals (e.g., Ni, Co, Cu, Au), for the removal of other pollutants (e.g., Se, As, Sb) and for nutrient removal (P, N)