An environmentally-friendly vacuum reduction metallurgical process to recover germanium from coal fly ash

作者：Zhang, Lingen; Xu, Zhenming^*

来源：Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2016, 312: 28-36.

DOI：10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.03.025

• Coal fly ash
• Germanium
• Vacuum reduction metallurgical process
• (VRMP)
• Recycle

The demand for germanium in the field of semiconductor, electronics, and optical devices is growing rapidly; however, the resources of germanium are scarce worldwide. As a secondary material, coal fly ash could be further recycled to retrieve germanium. Up to now, the conventional processes to recover germanium have two problems as follows: on the one hand, it is difficult to be satisfactory for its economic and environmental effect; on the other hand, the recovery ratio of germanium is not all that could be desired. In this paper, an environmentally-friendly vacuum reduction metallurgical process (VRMP) was proposed to recover germanium from coal fly ash. The results of the laboratory scale experiments indicated that the appropriate parameters were 1173 K and 10 Pa with 10 wt% coke addition for 40 min, and recovery ratio germanium was 93.96%. On the basis of above condition, the pilot scale experiments were utilized to assess the actual effect of VRMP for recovery of germanium with parameter of 1473 K, 1-10 Pa and heating time 40 min, the recovery ratio of germanium reached 94.64%. This process considerably enhances germanium recovery, meanwhile, eliminates much of the water usage and residue secondary pollution compared with other conventional processes.

• 出版日期2016-7-15
• 单位上海交通大学