Solvometallurgical recovery of antimony from waste polyvinyl chloride plastic and co-extraction of organic additives.

Antimony is a critical raw material in Europe wherein for 43% of its market share it is applied in the form of antimony trioxide as a fire retardant in plastics. Currently, antimony recycling from waste plastics does not take place and has been scarcely studied. In this work, a process was developed to extract antimony from a soft PVC material and recover it as SbClO.

Interesting Halophilic Sulphur-Oxidising Bacteria with Bioleaching Potential: Implications for Pollutant Mobilisation from Mine Waste.

For many years, research on the microbial-dissolution of metals from ores or waste materials mainly focussed on the study of acidophilic organisms. However, most acidophilic bioleaching microorganisms have limited tolerance to high chloride concentrations, thereby requiring fresh water for bioleaching operations. There is a growing interest in the use of seawater for leaching purposes, especially in regions with less access to fresh water.

Selective Pd recovery from acidic leachates by 3-mercaptopropylphosphonic acid grafted TiO: does surface coverage correlate to performance?

Modification of metal oxides with organophosphonic acids (PAs) provides the ability to control and tailor the surface properties. The metal oxide phosphonic acid bond (M-O-P) is known to be stable under harsh conditions, making PAs a promising candidate for the recovery of metals from complex acidic leachates. The thiol functional group is an excellent regenerable scavenging group for these applications.

Recovery of copper, zinc and lead from photovoltaic panel residue.

The increase in photovoltaic panel installations in Europe will generate vast amounts of waste in the near future. Therefore, it is important to develop new technologies that allow the recycling of end-of-life photovoltaic panels. This material can serve as a secondary resource, not only for precious metals ( silver), but also for base metals.

Selective leaching of copper and zinc from primary ores and secondary mineral residues using biogenic ammonia.

With the number of easily accessible ores depleting, alternate primary and secondary sources are required to meet the increasing demand of economically important metals. Whilst highly abundant, these materials are of lower grade with respect to traditional ores, thus highly selective and sustainable metal extraction technologies are needed to reduce processing costs. Here, we investigated the metal leaching potential of biogenic ammonia produced by a ureolytic strain of Lysinibacillus sphaericus on eight primary and secondary materials, comprised of mining and metallurgical residues, sludges and automotive shredder residues (ASR).

Microwave assisted chloride leaching of zinc plant residues.

Microwave (MW) assisted chloride leaching was studied to remove valuable and heavy metals from two zinc plant residues, i.e. goethite sludge and Zn-leach product.

Selective recovery of zinc from goethite residue in the zinc industry using deep-eutectic solvents.

Several deep-eutectic solvents (DESs) were tested for the valorisation of goethite residue produced by the zinc industry. The objective of the work was to selectively recover zinc from the iron-rich matrix using deep-eutectic solvents as lixiviants. The effect of the type of hydrogen bond donor and hydrogen bond acceptor of the deep-eutectic solvent on the leaching efficiency was studied.

Round robin testing of a percolation column leaching procedure.

Round robin test results of a percolation column leaching procedure (CEN/TS 14405:2004), organised by the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), over a time span of 13years with a participation of between 8 and 18 different laboratories are presented and discussed. Focus is on the leachability of heavy metals As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn from mineral waste materials. By performing statistical analyses on the obtained results, insight into the reproducibility and repeatability of the column leaching test is gathered.

Transport properties of glass-forming liquids suggest that dynamic crossover temperature is as important as the glass transition temperature.

It is becoming common practice to partition glass-forming liquids into two classes based on the dependence of the shear viscosity η on temperature T. In an Arrhenius plot, ln η vs 1/T, a strong liquid shows linear behavior whereas a fragile liquid exhibits an upward curvature [super-Arrhenius (SA) behavior], a situation customarily described by using the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law. Here we analyze existing data of the transport coefficients of 84 glass-forming liquids.

Dynamical crossover and breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein relation in confined water and in methanol-diluted bulk water.

Using nuclear magnetic resonance and quasi-elastic neutron scattering spectroscopic techniques, we obtain experimental evidence of a well-defined dynamic crossover temperature T(L) in supercooled water. We consider three different geometrical environments: (i) water confined in a nanotube (quasi-one-dimensional water), (ii) water in the first hydration layer of the lysozyme protein (quasi-two-dimensional water), and (iii) water in a mixture with methanol at a methanol molar fraction of x = 0.22 (quasi-three-dimensional water).

Clustering dynamics in water/methanol mixtures: a nuclear magnetic resonance study at 205 k

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) experiments have been performed to measure the spin-lattice, T1, and spin-spin, T2, relaxation times of the three functional groups in water/methanol mixtures at different methanol molar fractions (XMeOH=0, 0.04, 0.1, 0.