Recently, the demand for lithium metal and its associated compounds has been growing exponentially, mainly due to the increased consumption of lithium ion batteries. Consequently, to meet this demand, minerals such as spodumene have become the most important lithium-bearing resources. Although numerous methods have been studied for the extraction of lithium from spodumene, the conventional process of spodumene decrepitation followed by leaching in sulfuric acid, remains the proven commercial process. In the high temperature decrepitation process, α-spodumene is converted into β-spodumene and also some intermediate γ-spodumene can form. In the current research, a comprehensive thermodynamic analysis of the decrepitation of spodumene has been performed using HSC Chemistry ® 7.1. Firstly, the thermodynamic data available in the literature for the various relevant lithium aluminosilicates was evaluated and then this data was incorporated into the HSC data base. Secondly, using the experimental data available in the literature, the nonideal behaviour of spodumene was accounted for by the incorporation of activity coefficients. Finally, the model was applied to the decrepitation of both pure spodumene and also a spodumene concentrate. The modelled conversion results were in good agreement with the process data available in the literature.
During the remelting of automobile scrap in the electric arc furnace steelmaking process, a dust is generated. This dust contains significant amounts of zinc, iron, and lead and in some cases, copper and nickel. However, the recovery of these metals is difficult, because of the complex chemical and physical characteristics of the dust. Numerous pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical and hybrid processes have been devised and tested for metal recovery, but only the Waelz rotary kiln process has achieved significant commercialisation. One potential process, which has received little attention in the literature, is the pyrometallurgical sulphation of the dust. In the present research, a high temperature thermodynamic model has been developed using HSC® Chemistry 7.1, to investigate the sulphation of the dust. The effects of process parameters on the conversion of the various metals into sulphates were studied. At a temperature of 600 °C, almost one hundred percent of the zinc could be converted into zinc sulphate, while about ninety-five percent of the iron could be retained as hematite. In addition, several low cost, potential sulphating reagents were evaluated.
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