Considerations of Advanced Electrowinning Concepts
摘要
An approach to reducing the carbon footprint of an electrowinning process is a complete redesign of the cell, with or without altering the anode process. We will review some of the concepts found in the literature for cell design along with their economic promise. Some candidates are rotating drum cells, spouted (or falling packed) bed cells, EMEW cells, and hydrocyclone cells. All kinds of metals can be considered here: base metals including copper, precious metals—gold, silver, and platinum group metals of rows 5–6—and rare earth metals. Proof of any such technology at plant scale may need a medium to large volume but relatively high value metal. A by-product may be a good candidate. By and large, all the factors delineated in our other paper at this symposium outside of the one dependent on a parallel plate electrode geometry are likely to remain important, with some exceptions for precious metals and copper. A change in cell geometry might be modeled via a change in Wark’s constant. Although proton-blocking anion exchange membranes showed some promise for spouted bed electrowinning, based on technical risk, it is probably better to decouple a membrane process for the separation of acid and salt from the electrowinning process. With this contribution, we aim to attract a new generation of metallurgists to this field and to inspire a consortium to support the development and piloting of advanced concepts on suitable candidate metals.