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DOI

  • Alex Riley
    School of Environmental Sciences, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, United KingdomSeparations and Nuclear Chemical Engineering Research (SNUCER), Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, United Kingdom
  • Christopher Porter
    WasteCare Ltd., Richmond House, Leeds LS25 1NB, UK
  • Mark Ogden
The extraction of Cu from mixed-metal acidic solutions by the thiourea-functionalized resin Puromet MTS9140 was studied. Despite being originally manufactured for precious metal recovery, a high selectivity towards Cu was observed over other first-row transition metals (>90% removal), highlighting a potential for this resin in base metal recovery circuits. Resin behaviour was characterised in batch-mode under a range of pH and sulphate concentrations and as a function of flow rate in a fixed-bed setup. In each instance, a high selectivity and capacity (max. 32.04 mg/g) towards Cu was observed and was unaffected by changes in solution chemistry. The mechanism of extraction was determined by XPS to be through reduction of Cu(II) to Cu(I) rather than chelation. Elution of Cu was achieved by the use of 0.5 M–1 M NaClO3. Despite effective Cu elution (82%), degradation of resin functionality was observed, and further detailed through the application of IC analysis to identify degradation by-products. This work is the first detailed study of a thiourea-functionalized resin being used to selectively target Cu from a complex multi-metal solution.

Keywords

  • resource recovery, Copper, reductive extraction, ion exchange, thiourea, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS)
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)512-530
Number of pages18
JournalEng
Volume2
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Nov 2021
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