SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

Russian and Belarusian scientists have developed a waste-free method for extracting vanadium, a metal widely used in metallurgy to increase the strength of alloys, from sulfuric acid production waste. The new technology will allow to extract up to 98% of the vanadium contained in such waste. Its implementation at enterprises, according to developers, will cost 120-125 thousand US dollars, and will pay off in less than a year, despite the fact that the current technology costs about 300 thousand US dollars. The study is published in the journal Hydrometallurgy.
Vanadium is widely used in the aerospace, defense, energy and automotive industries. At the same time, its main consumer remains ferrous metallurgy, in which vanadium is used to increase the strength and wear resistance of steel – up to 85% of global vanadium consumption falls on this industry.
Vanadium does not occur in nature in a free form, it is mainly obtained from iron ores that contain vanadium as an impurity. However, the current production volumes do not meet the growing demand of the industry.
The main source of vanadium for industry is converter slags. Alternative sources of vanadium production can be industrial waste containing it, for example, fly ash or spent vanadium catalysts. The latter are the most preferred source, since the vanadium content in them reaches 5-10% of the total mass of the substance. In addition to vanadium, they also contain a number of other valuable components, such as copper, nickel, molybdenum and cobalt.
About 40 thousand tons of spent vanadium catalysts are formed annually as a result of the production of sulfuric acid – one of the main products of the chemical industry. The extraction of vanadium will not only solve the problem of using sulfuric acid production waste, but also reduce the cost of extracting this metal, since its extraction from secondary sources is much cheaper than from natural materials.
Scientists of the Research Center "Structural Ceramic Nanomaterials" of NUST MISIS, the Belarusian State Technological University and the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus have developed a waste-free complex method for extracting vanadium from sulfuric acid production waste using sulfuric acid, sulfides, persulfates and other reagents, which are the main products of production, as a result of which spent vanadium catalysts are formed. Thus, the technology of vanadium extraction proposed by the researchers can be implemented directly at enterprises producing sulfuric acid.
"The multi-stage method of obtaining vanadium from spent catalysts developed by us includes grinding, magnetization of iron and two-stage leaching of vanadium. At the first stage, vanadium is leached with a solution of sulfuric acid during ultrasonic treatment. At the second stage, vanadium is further leached with a solution of sodium sulfite. At the final stage, there is a thermohydrolytic (boiling) separation of vanadium from a solution of pre-oxidized ammonium persulfate, " says Elena Romanovskaya, senior researcher at the Belarusian State Technological University.
"This method allows to extract up to 98% of high-purity vanadium contained in catalysts. It can be used in construction, agriculture and other industrial sectors, " adds Valentin Romanovsky, an employee of the NUST MISIS Structural Ceramic Nanomaterials Research Center
According to the authors of the study, the introduction of this technology will cost 120-125 thousand dollars, and will pay off in less than a year. At the same time, it can be adapted for the extraction of vanadium from other types of waste, including spent fuel oils and petroleum coke.
ab-news.ru