Recovery of molybdenum and rhenium in scrub liquors of fumes and dusts from roasting molybdenite concentrates

Abstract

The present work addresses the recovery of rhenium from scrub liquor of molybdenite concentrate roasting fume and dust by solvent extraction method. According to the results, recovery of rhenium from the scrub liquor is not practical unless molybdenum is removed in advance. The extraction of molybdenum was carried out using a D2EHPA-TBP system which resulted in up to 99.8% Mo extraction in a two-stage solvent extraction at pH = 1 and O/A = 1. Up to 99.6% of Re was extracted subsequently using TOA in a single-stage extraction at pH = −0.3 and O/A = 1:20. The organic phase was stripped by ammonium hydroxide 32% and the resultant liquor was further subjected to evaporation as a result of which, an enriched purified solution was obtained. Ammonium perrhenate was precipitated from the enriched liquor by adjusting the pH to 6.5–7.