Sustainable recycling of titanium from TiO_(2) in spent SCR denitration catalyst via molten salt electrolysis

Spent catalyst used for denitration by selective catalytic reduction(spent SCR denitration catalysts) is one of the important urban mines due to the high content of TiO_(2)(~85 wt%) and the massive accumulation amount(over 100,000 tons),therefore,value-added reutilization of titanium in spent SCR catalysts is considerably meaningful.In this paper,a novel method is proposed for converting the titanium oxide in spent SCR denitration catalysts to metallic titanium.Specifically,titanium dioxide(TiO_(2)) was firstly obtained from spent SCR denitration catalysts after removing the impurities by hydrometallurgy process.Then,TiO_(2) is converted to Ti_(2)CO by carbothermic reduction method,and Ti_(2)CO was further purified by oleic acid capture.Finally,by utilizing the as-prepared Ti_(2)CO as the consumable anode in the NaCl-KCl molten salt,high-purity metallic titanium was deposited at cathode,all confirming the feasibility for the conversion of low-grade TiO_(2) in the spent catalysts,from 60 wt% to high-purity metallic Ti(99.5 wt%), furthermore,the energy consumption of this process is 3950 kWh tonne-1 Ti,which is lower than that of most traditional titanium metallurgy methods.The method herein can provide new insights for the value-added recycling of titanium resources in urban mines.

The silicothermic reduction of magnesium in flowing argon and numerical simulation of novel technology

The silicothermic reduction of magnesium was investigated by the non-isothermal thermoanalysis in flowing argon,while the traditional investigations of silicothermic process for magnesium reduction were carried out under vacuum conditions.Firstly,the thermal gravimetric(TG)and derivative thermogravimetric(DTG)characteristic of briquettes prepared with calcined dolomite,ferrosilicon and fluorite were characterized by the thermogravimetric analyzer(TGA)at different heating rates.The intrinsic chemical kinetic mechanism was identified as a formal chemical reaction with the Nth order type which showed apparent activation energy E and reaction order n were 290.168 kJ mol^(-1) and 1.076,respectively.Then,a novel technique of magnesium production without vacuum was put forward and a three-dimensional unsteady numerical model incorporating the chemical reaction,radiation,heat conduction and heat convection was established and simulated,which was verified by Pidgeon process and novel tech no logy.rIhe nu merical results showed that the cycle time of the novel technique could be reduced when the argon temperature was higher than 1343 K and the argon entrance velocity was over 0.05 m s^(-1).And the effect of the argon temperature on reduction degree was much larger than that of entrance velocity.