Hydrometallurgical purification of metallurgical grade silicon

The effects of the particle size of ground metallurgical grade silicon （MG-Si）, the sort of acids, and the type of stirring on the purified efficiency of MG-Si were investigated. It was found that a particle size less than 0.1 mm was most effective for acid leaching; the extraction yield of impurities was increased by 9% with HF leaching compared with HCl leaching and HNO3 leaching, and increased by 7% with ultrasonic stirring compared with mechanical stirring. The principle of hydrometallurgical purification of metallurgical grade silicon under ultrasonic fields was also discussed.

Effects of grinding environment and lattice impurities on spodumene flotation

The effect of grinding on the spodumene flotation was investigated. The flotation response of spodumene ground by different mills was different, due to the variation of metal ions on spodumene surfaces caused by grinding environments and/or impurities. The samples were subjected to acid pickling treatment to remove most of the metal ions from the surfaces, and then all samples showed the same poor flotation response, which confirmed the significance of surface metal ions. Metal ion impurities may come from both grinding environments and lattice substitutions in spodumene. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation revealed that Fe and Ca could exist as lattice substitutions on the spodumene surface while Mg substitution is unlikely to occur. Furthermore, Fe is considered to be active site for the absorption of sodium oleate on the spodumene surface. Morphology analysis showed differences in particle size and shape for samples ground by different mills, resulting in different amounts of exposed surfaces. The particle size, cleavage characteristics caused by grinding environments, and metal ion impurities originated from grinding and isomorphous substitutions, play significant roles in the chemisorption of collector on the spodumene surface.

Inhibition of CaCO_3 Scaling in Reverse Osmosis System by Zinc Ion

Scaling of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane surface is one of the main problems in desalination proc- esses. To mitigate scales, organic anti-scalants are often used. If the dosages of anti-scalants are reduced, by using other much cheaper scale inhibitors, RO running cost will decrease greatly. The present paper investigated the inhi- bition of CaCO3 precipitation by zinc ions in RO system. The results show that the zinc ion concentration of 2mg?L-1 was able to exert a marked suppression effect on both bulk precipitation of CaCO3 and on membrane scaling on waters of moderate hardness.

Leaching behavior of zinc from crude zinc oxide dust in ammonia leaching

Zinc extraction from crude zinc oxide(CZO)is beneficial to the full utilization of secondary resources and environmental protection.In this paper,a systematic investigation was carried out to study the leaching behavior of CZO by using ammonia-ammonium carbonate solution.It was found that the maximum leaching rate of zinc from CZO dust was 95.7%under the conditions of[Zn]T:[NH 3]T:[CO_(3)^(2−)]=1:7.00:1.75,liquid to solid ratio 5:1,leaching temperature 30℃ and leaching time 60 min.Compared with pure zinc oxide(PZO)leaching,the CZO leaching required longer time and more leaching agents,which is caused by the Cd^(2+),Pb^(2+) and other metal cationic impurities in CZO.The metal cationic impurities dissolved in the leaching solution and combined with ammonium to form complexes,consuming leaching agents and affecting zinc leaching.

Deep Purification of Zinc Ammoniacal Leaching Solution by Cementation with Zinc Dust

Deep purification of zinc ammoniacal leaching solution by cementation using zinc dust was studied.The effects of relative amount of metallic impurities,dosage of zinc dust,purification time,temperature,pH value and total ammonia concentration in the solution on the purification of the solution were investigated.The results indicate that total ammonia concentration in the solution had no effect on the purification,but relative amount of metallic impurities,dosage of zinc dust,purification time,temperature and pH value of the solution were the main factors influencing the purification.Keeping appropriate molar ratio of copper to cadmium or nickel to cadmium was beneficial to the cementation of cadmium.Nevertheless,the presence of cobalt went against the cementation of cadmium and cobalt.All metallic impurities could be decreased to acceptable levels under the optimized conditions of 2 g/L of zinc dust dosage,1 h of purification time,35℃,pH value 9.03 of zinc ammoniacal leaching solution.The deeply purified zinc ammoniacal solution obtained by one-stage purification meets the requirements of zinc electrowinning.

Kernel polynomial representation for imaginary-time Green's functions in continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver

Inspired by the recently proposed Legendre orthogonal polynomial representation for imaginary-time Green s functions G（τ）,we develop an alternate and superior representation for G（τ） and implement it in the hybridization expansion continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver.This representation is based on the kernel polynomial method,which introduces some integral kernel functions to filter the numerical fluctuations caused by the explicit truncations of polynomial expansion series and can improve the computational precision significantly.As an illustration of the new representation,we re-examine the imaginary-time Green＇s functions of the single-band Hubbard model in the framework of dynamical mean-field theory.The calculated results suggest that with carefully chosen integral kernel functions,whether the system is metallic or insulating,the Gibbs oscillations found in the previous Legendre orthogonal polynomial representation have been vastly suppressed and remarkable corrections to the measured Green＇s functions have been obtained.

Removal of SiC particles from solar grade silicon melts by imposition of high frequency magnetic field

Non-metallic particles and metallic impurities present in the feedstock affect the electrical and mechanical properties of high quality silicon which is used in critical applications such as photovoltaic solar cells and electronic devices. SiC particles strongly deteriorate the mechanical properties of photovoltaic cells and cause shunting problem. Therefore, these particles should be removed from silicon before solar cells are fabricated from this material. Separation of non-metallic particles from liquid metals by imposing an electromagnetic field was identified as an enhanced technology to produce ultra pure metals. Application of this method for removal of SiC particles from metallurgical grade silicon （MG-Si） was presented. Numerical methods based on a combination of classical models for inclusion removal and computational fluid dynamics （CFD） were developed to calculate the particle concentration and separation efficiency from the melt. In order to check efficiency of the method, several experiments were done using an induction furnace. The experimental results show that this method can be effectively applied to purifying silicon melts from the non-metallic inclusions. The results are in a good agreement with the predictions made by the model.