Gipronickel Institute, Laboratory of Hydrometallurgy

L. V. Volkov, Chief Researcher
M. A. Pleshkov, Leading Researcher, e-mail: MAPles@nikel.spb.su

The paper concerns the energetic effectiveness of soda technologies used for rich enough scheelite concentrates (by 40 % (mass.) of WO₃), that are separated by tungsten solutions conversion aimed on revealing the connection between the method of chemical transformations fulfillment and thermal energy consumption. On the basis of the diagrams of the initial products transformation to final ones the minimum energy consumption was theoretically determined, and diagrams of material flows were taken as the basis for the calculation of design indices and for the evaluation of energy consumption for the processes with water recirculation, using weakly basic and strongly basic anion exchangers for tungsten solutions conversion. It was demonstrated that soda technologies used for rich scheelite feed processing are characterized by high power consumption, with this about 50–60% of thermal energy are used for separation and water recycling, the rest being used for solutions and slurry heating on different stages of the process. The use of weakly basic anion exchangers for tungsten solutions conversion provides heat consumption decrease by about 10% as compared with the schemes using strongly basic ion exchangers.

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