Disassociation processing of metal oxides

Abstract

The invention relates to systems and processes for recovery and / or extraction of metal values from ore or other raw material containing oxides of the metal and to precipitation of oxides of metals that have oxidation states and / or pollutant loading capacities equal to or greater than that of the metal oxides in the ore or other raw material which are suitable, amongst other uses, as a sorbent for capture and removal of target pollutants from industrial and other gas streams. Further, the invention relates to oxides of metals so recovered and precipitated.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 387,994, filed Jun. 11, 2002, U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 342,587, filed Dec. 21, 2001, now U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 328,490, filed Dec. 23, 2002 and International Application No. US02 / 41276, filed Dec. 23, 2002, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 362,477, filed Mar. 6, 2002, now U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 384,473, filed Mar. 6, 2003 and International Application No. US03 / 07098, filed Mar. 6, 2003, which are incorporated by reference herein.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002] The invention relates to systems and processes for recovery and / or extraction of metal values from ore or other raw material containing oxides of the metal and precipitation of oxides of metals that have oxidation states and / or pollutant loading capacities equal to or greater than that of the metal oxides in the ore or other raw material which are suitable, amongst other uses, as a sorben...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The invention relates to a system and process for recovery and precipitation of oxides of metals that have high oxidation states and / or high pollutant loading capacities. The system includes a well bore hole for injecting a leaching solution, a precipitation vessel equipped with probes for measuring temperature, Eh, and pH values, an oxidant feeder containing a supply of aqueous oxidizing solution, a heater, a base and / or acid feeder, a filtration and / or rinse unit, and a controller for monitoring and adjusting system operational parameters. The process involves leaching metal values from ore or other raw materials containing impure oxides of the metal, heating the solution containing cations and anions of disassociated metal salts, mixing it with a heated aqueous oxidizing solution, and maintaining the solution conditions within the metal oxide stability area to precipitate the metal cations out of solution as precipitated oxides of metal. The recovered oxides of metals can be used as sorbents for target pollutants in industrial and other gas streams."

Problems solved by technology

The most common form of NMD is pyrolusite (.beta.-MnO2), which is inexpensive, but has rather low chemical activity and therefore low pollutant loading capacity.

Though useful as sorbent, characteristics such as low surface area and large compact particle size make EMD somewhat inferior to CMD for gas removal applications, despite its good electrochemical activity.

Oxides of manganese and other metals have the ability to capture target pollutants from gas streams, however, the low pollutant loading rates achieved with various prior art oxides of metals have made some industrial applications of this characteristic uneconomical.

The large quantity of sorbent that would be required to capture NOx and / or SO2 could result in an overly costly pollutant removal system and sorbent regeneration system.

Further, the oxidation state and thus the loading capacity of the oxides of manganese below the surface of the reaction product coating may be reduced during the pollutant removal, thus diminishing the loading capacity of sorbent even after the reaction product have been removed or disassociated into an aqueous solution.

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