Degradation Of FLZ In Zinc Sulfate Electrolyte And Its Zinc Electrowinning

Zinc is one of the important nonferrous metals, which occupies an momentous status in the national economy. With the exhaustion of the zinc sulfide ore resources and sharp decrease of grade of zinc ore, the development and utilization of low-grade zinc oxide ore become imperative. In the leaching process of zinc oxide concentrate, the collectors (FLZ) enter into lixivium and seriously affect the electro-deposition of lixivium. In order to eliminate the effect of FLZ on the electro-deposition of lixivium, one of the feasible method is the degradation of collector. The paper introduces ultrasonic degradation into organic FLZ in the lixivium.Zinc sulfate electrolyte from factory and prepared by ourselves were investigated in this paper. For the Zinc Sulfate Electrolyte from factory, the effect of adding FLZ and with different time of ultrasonic treament on the current efficiency of electrowinning and the surface appearance of Zinc were studied. For the zinc sulfate electrolyte prepared by ourselves, the factors including FLZ concentration, ratio of acid to zinc, ultrasonic intensity and impurity content were investigated. The influence of FLZ concentration and ultrasonic treatment on electrowinning was studied. And the FLZ solution with different concentration under130g/L and105g/L before and after ultrasonic treatment were studied in acid zinc rate experiment. FLZ solution with different concentration treated by ultrasonic with different intensity were studied in ultrasonic intensity experiment; The effect of FLZ under some impurities exceed standard and after ultrasonic treatment to electrowinning experiment were studied in impurities content experiment.The current efficiency of electrowinning and the surface appearance of zinc were significantly improved after ultrasound treatment, the current efficiency increased by10.15%after ultrasound for8h (before51.60%; after61.75%), and the ultrasonic treatment time was controlled for8h consider other conditions. The results of investigation on FLZ concentration suggested that the effect of ultrasonic treatment is more obvious when the concentration of FLZ is as low as0.2g/L,, the current efficiency increased from68.94%to75.09%., and therefore the FLZ concentration was fixed to0.2g/L to carry out the impurities content experiments. The results revealed that the effect of FLZ on zinc electrowinning can be reduced to some extent by properly decreasing the ratio of acid to zinc and strictly controlling the impurity content of the zinc sulfate electrolyte in the presence of FLZ.