Treatment of manganese-containing materials
AssigneeDrinkard Research and Development Corporation
InventorsWilliam F. Drinkard, Hans J. Woerner, William M. Nixon
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Abstract
An improved method for treating manganese-containing materials, such as seafloor manganese nodules, by leaching with aqueous HNO3 and NO gas, and more particularly to methods for recovering valuable constituents from such nodules, especially manganese, cobalt, nickel, iron, and copper. It also provides a method to leach manganese material to release the titanium, vanadium, cerium, molybdenum and other metals from the manganese oxides and to make them available to be recovered.
Claims23
A method of recovering manganese from materials containing manganese-dioxide and other metal values, comprising the steps of:
- a. leaching the manganese-dioxide containing materials with HNO3 and NO gas in an aqueous solution to form MnO which dissolves in the nitric acid and releases the accompanying metals into solution, and leaving an acid-insoluble residue;
- b. precipitating iron from the solution as a residue;
- c. separating the iron-containing residue from the solution;
- and
- d. precipitating and recovering manganese from the solution.
A method of recovering metal values from deep-sea manganese nodules, comprising the steps of:
- a. obtaining manganese-containing nodules having a manganese content in excess of 20%, and containing at least one of the metals of the group consisting of:
- cobalt, nickel, lead, copper, magnesium, aluminum, iron, cadmium, zirconium, titanium, zinc, cerium, molybdenum, phosphorus, barium, and vanadium;
- b. leaching the nodules with HNO3 and NO gas in an aqueous solution to form manganese nitrate and to release the other metals;
- c. adding pH adjusting agents to the solution to precipitate ferric hydroxide;
- d. separating the precipitated ferric hydroxide from the solution;
- e. adjusting the solution to a low pH and introducing a sulfide to the solution to precipitate copper, lead, cadmium, and zinc, if present in the solution;
- f. raising the pH of the solution and introducing additional sulfide to precipitate cobalt and nickel sulfides;
- and
- g. raising the solution pH to about 8 to 10 to precipitate hydrated manganese oxide.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.