Regular Article

Resource utilization of titanium-containing slurry by selective extraction and leaching

School of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Chongqing, 4013310, PR China

^* e-mail: xxycsu@163.com 

Received: 20 August 2017
Accepted: 11 January 2018

Abstract

Resource utilization of titanium-containing slurry was realized by selective extraction and leaching. The results from the experiment confirmed that thistechnology was effective for recycling titanium and niobium from the slurry. During selective extraction, the extract solution with titanium content of 159.40 g/L was obtained after 3 stage-counter current extractions, and the titanium content of extracted residue could be reduced to 1.85 wt% which was much lower than the titanium content of titanium-containing slurry. The results of evaporation experiments indicated that CH₂Cl₂ in extracted residue could be separated and recovered effectively by evaporation and high temperature is beneficial for the whole process. Meanwhile, the titanium oxide and titanium oxychloride in extracted residue could also be transformed into TiCl₄ and recovered by evaporation as the evaporation of dichloromethane in extracted residue. The beneficiation of niobium could be achieved when the evaporated residue was leached with diluted hydrochloric acid, the results of leaching test showed that more than 97% of the aluminum in evaporation residue was dissolved, while, only 1.3% of the niobium was leached. Finally, niobium concentrate with Nb₂O₅ content of 76.39% was obtained by washing the leaching residue with dilute ammonia water.