Alkaline selective separation of silicon/vanadium from vanadium-bearing shale and recovery of silica
摘要
To overcome the lack of effective separation driving force in traditional physical pre-concentration methods for vanadium hosted in mica-type minerals, an alkaline selective pre-desilication route for silicon/vanadium separation was proposed based on the differences in reactivity and structural stability of various mineral phases in alkaline systems. By controlling the reaction conditions, preferential dissolution of SiO2 and relative retention of vanadium in the solid phase were achieved. To quantitatively evaluate the separation behavior, the selectivity coefficient α(Si/V) was introduced to characterize the relative dissolution differences between SiO2 and V2O5, and the effective selective separation window was subsequently determined. The results showed that under the conditions of NaOH concentration of 160 g/L, liquid-to-solid ratio of 4 mL/g, temperature of 190 °C, and reaction time of 20 min, the leaching rate of SiO2 reached 62.29%, while that of V2O5 was only 10.56%, corresponding to an α(Si/V) value of 5.9. The V2O5 grade in the solid phase was enriched from 1.09% to 1.87% after desilication. Under the studied conditions, the apparent leaching processes of both SiO2 and V2O5 could be described by the unreacted shrinking core model. The dissolved silicon in the desilication liquor was recovered as precipitated silica via carbonation reaction, achieving an SiO2 recovery rate exceeding 97% and a product purity higher than 99%. The carbonate system after carbonation could be further regenerated into NaOH through causticizing treatment.