(session 2) Recovery of nickel and cobalt from laterite leach tailings through resin-in-pulp scavenging and selective ammoniacal elution

摘要

In the hydrometallurgical processing of nickel laterite ore, a significant amount of dissolvednickel and cobalt can be lost to neutralized tailings slurry during counter current decantation.Resin-in-pulp (RIP) scavenging using ion exchange resin functionalized with iminodiaceticacid (IDA) has been proposed as an effective way to recover lost metal value. However, thetendency of this resin to co-load impurities makes integration of metal value back into theplant challenging. In this paper, the application of bis-picolylamine functionalized resin toRIP scavenging is explored. Both types of resin load the valuable metals effectively but bispicolylaminefunctionalized resin has a much lower affinity for unwanted impurities. Afterloading, selective elution of nickel and cobalt from the new resin was carried out using anammonia based eluent. The resultant eluate was high in nickel and cobalt with only ppmlevels of impurities, making it appropriate for downstream integration in existingnickel/cobalt refineries.