Crystallisation of inorganic compounds with alcohols

Crystallisation, one of the oldest unit operations, is of major economic importance in the hydrometallurgical industry for the separation and/or production of inorganic metal compounds in the form of good quality crystals, both in terms of purity and size. However, industrial crystallisation techniques usually have high energy requirements (e.g. evaporative crystallisation) and the residual solutions are often extremely corrosive, resulting in elevated operating and maintenance costs. Additionally, the majority of industrial crystallisation methods do not render to the appropriate supersaturation control, therefore the produced salts are agglomerates of fine crystallites with heavy solution entrainment and contamination.; In this work, the Solvent Displacement Crystallisation (SDC) technique is investigated as an attractive alternative to the conventional crystallisation methods. SDC involves the addition of low-boiling point, water-miscible organic solvents (MOS) to aqueous solutions to cause salt precipitation based on the salting out effect. The crystals are separated by filtration whereas the solvent is subsequently recovered for reuse by low-temperature distillation. The present work was initiated with the main objective to develop a solid scientific understanding of the SDC process and propose specific applications to hydrometallurgical systems of practical interest.; Criteria for the selection of organic solvents with suitable physical and chemical properties have been established and various compounds screened to determine their amenability to SDC; 2-propanol was selected as an effective salting out agent to cause precipitation of most metallic sulphates of practical interest from acidic solutions and opted for use in further studies. Differences in crystallisation behaviour among the various metal sulphates were attributed to differences in hydration energy (the energy required for a hydrated ion to be separated from its bound water).; None of the tested metal chlorides could be successfully separated from HCl-H2O system with 2-propanol. This was explained in terms of enhanced metal chlorides solubilities in non-aqueous solvents relative to water by formation of chloro-complexes of larger stability constants. The preferential formation of chloro-complexes in mixed aqueous and organic solvents is the result of the almost linear drastic increase in the activity of Cl - with mole fraction organic.; Successful examples of using the SDC method in conjunction with an industrial process involve precipitation of NiSO4·6H2O from copper electrorefining spent electrolytes, residual sulphate removal as gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O) in chloride leaching processes and ZnO separation/NaOH regeneration in the system Na2ZnO2, - NaOH - H2O. By maintaining a low supersaturation (i.e. controlled addition of the solvent to the electrolyte) and heterogeneous crystallisation conditions (use of seed/product recycling), crystal growth is favoured while impurity uptake/contamination is minimised.