Recovery of Lead from Lead Laden Cupels by a Simultaneous Leaching and Electrowinning Process in a Methanesulphonic acid bath

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
This article is published under the International Journal of ChemTech Research Vol.6, No.4, pp 2404-2413 by Sphinx Knowledge House. It is a reserch dealing with "Recovery of Lead from Lead Laden Cupels by a Simultaneous Leaching and Electrowinning Process in a Methanesulphonic acid bath"
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.