Bayer Process
AssigneeRio Tinto AIcan International Limited
InventorsNeil Hofstee, Alistair Gillespie, Tomas Mach, Warren Staker
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Abstract
A Bayer process increases oxalate removal in the red side of the Bayer process and at least substantially minimises, for example by at least substantially suppressing, precipitation of oxalates in the white side of the Bayer process.
Claims14
A Bayer plant for dissolving alumina contained in bauxite that is configured to control the concentration of oxalates in solution in a Bayer liquor in a red side of the plant to be as high as possible to drive oxalate removal from the Bayer liquor in the red side of the plant without resulting in oxalate precipitation in a precipitation step in a white side of the plant, with the Bayer plant including unit operations for the red side of the plant configured to control a bauxite reactive silica concentration in the Bayer liquor to facilitate removal of oxalates from solution in the Bayer liquor and configured to add Bayer liquor to bauxite on the red side of the plant to increase the oxalate concentration in solution in Bayer liquor resulting from digestion of bauxite in the red side of the plant and a unit operation for the white side of the plant configured to add a reagent to the Bayer liquor upstream of the precipitation step to minimize oxalate precipitation in the precipitation step,
- wherein there is no unit operations for oxalate removal on the white side of the plant.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.