Ecological recovery of Copper and Arsenic

ECOLOGICAL PROCESS FOR THE RECOVERY OF COPPER AND ARSENIC FROM "STRIPPING CELLS MUD" OF COPPER REFINERIES.

Copper refineries usually treat copper metal containing different amounts of arsenic. This arsenic is afterwards removed in the so called "stripping cells". In these a mud is obtained which contains from 7% to 27% Arsenic and 40% to 60% copper . These muds are disposed as such or previously dried and stocked, being a potential source of enviromental contamination.

In view of the lack of an economical procedure for the treatment of "stripping cells mud"residues and the growing concern about their potential enviromental risk, it is an object of the present method to provide a process for the recovery of copper and arsenic from the "stripping cells mud" of copper refineries without the creation of ecologically harmful by-products.

Process

Chemical Reactions

Experimental Data

Authors’refererence

This process provides for the recovery of copper from "stripping cells mud" rendering at the same time the contaminant arsenic as an insoluble compound harmless to the enviroment and useful as a source of arsenic metal and / or other arsenic compounds, so reducing the cost and complexity of by-product disposal associated with a process for the recovery of copper and arsenic from the "stripping cells mud"of copper refineries.

Briefly, the present is a process for recovering copper and arsenic metals from "stripping cells mud" of copper refineries, comprising the steps of leaching or fusing the copper-arsenic mud, with an alkali hydroxide, obtaining copper metal and cuprous oxide and a solution of arsenic which will be precipitated afterwards to obtain an insoluble salt of this element. The process eliminates most of the arsenic contained in the mud as an insoluble arsenic compound.

Adolfo Rios Pita Giurfa, Peruvian, has developed several hydrometalurgy processes, among these: a method for ecological & cheap recycling of aluminium metal; a method for recovering lead as lead sulphate- pigment grade- out of the Lead-silver residues of zinc refineries; a method for recovering mercury and selenium from zinc roast dust flues,etc. In recent years was hired by Minero-Peru for the construction of a plant for the production of C.P.Cadmium pigments. Nowadays he is a private consultant.