Recovery of Lead from Lead Laden Cupels by a Simultaneous Leaching and Electrowinning Process in a Methanesulphonic acid bath
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Date
2014-07
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sphinx Knowledge House
Abstract
Cupels are generated by mines during the fire assaying of precious group metals. The cupels contain
lead which is a known environmental hazard hence the need to recover it. This work illustrates how leaching
and electrowinning processes can be combined to produce a hybrid lead recovery process. Bench scale tests
were conducted for the hybrid leaching and electro winning process using Methane Sulfonic Acid (MSA) as a
leaching solvent at a concentration of 200g MSA per litre of water. A glass electrowinning cell fitted with a
9cm × 4cm pure lead cathode and 9cm × 4cm graphite anode with inter electrode gap of 15cm and a magnetic
stirrer bar was used. Lead laden cupels (containing 30g lead) were subjected to simultaneous leaching and
electrowinning and lead recovery after a period of 80 minutes was found to be 98%. The hybrid process was
found to require about 20% less solvent than that required for the convectional leaching process which requires
multiple stages to reduce the concentration of the solute in the raffinate to the same extent.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Leaching, electrowinning, lead laden cupels, methane sulfonic acid
Citation
Mangunda, C.T. et al., 2014. Recovery of Lead from Lead Laden Cupels by a Simultaneous Leaching and Electrowinning Process in a Methanesulphonic acid bath. International Journal of ChemTech Research, 6(4), pp.2404–2413.