Technical Application of Removing Lead and Cadmium from Crude Antimony by SbPO4-NaPO3 Composite Refining Agent
摘要
The crude antimony obtained through the current smelting process contains significant amounts of lead and cadmium and requires purification. Focus on the refining of crude antimony, this study proposes a SbPO4-NaPO3 composite refining agent and removes impurities through the interaction between the refining agent and crude antimony. The experimental data reveal that under the optimized refining parameters comprising a thermal treatment at 750 °C and with the SbPO4 dosage set at twice the theoretical amount, a NaPO3 feeding amount is the same as the SbPO4 feeding amount, coupled with a 3-h reaction interval under mechanical agitation at 200 rpm. Exceptional purification efficiency emerged as 96.78% of lead and 99.89% of cadmium were removed, with the content of lead and cadmium in antimony reduced to 0.11% and 0.0001%, respectively. Besides, the recovery percentage of antimony was 93.96%. Moreover, after the refining process, the contents of copper and iron in the refined antimony were only 0.0091% and 0.0026%, respectively, proving the remarkable efficacy of the purification process.