Process for producing high-purity potassium salts
AssigneesAvebe B.A., Kemira Agro Oy
InventorsMarcus Vorage, Per Eichner
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a new selective process for producing high-purity potassium nitrate or potassium phosphate. The process uses a liquid agricultural or fermentation by-product, such as molasses, vinasse or potato thick juice as its potassium source and comprises the following unit operations: clarification, ion exchange, neutralization, concentration and crystallization. Importantly, the present invention also concerns a process for producing an ingredient for animal feed, said ingredient having a reduced potassium content.
Claims12
A process for producing high-purity potassium salts using agricultural or fermentation by-products, wherein said process comprises the following sequential steps:
- (a) loading a cation exchange resin with potassium by feeding an agricultural or fermentation by-product containing potassium and organic compounds,
- (b) stripping the resin to form a potassium containing solution,
- (c) neutralizing the potassium containing solution,
- (d) concentrating the neutralized solution, and
- (e) crystallizing the high-purity potassium salt from the concentrated solution obtained in step (d).
A process for producing an ingredient for animal feed with reduced potassium content, wherein the process uses a liquid agricultural or fermentation by-product as its potassium source and comprises the following sequential unit operations:
- (a) loading a cation exchange resin with potassium by feeding an agricultural or fermentation by-product containing potassium and organic compounds,
- (b) stripping the resin to form a potassium containing solution,
- (c) neutralizing the potassium containing solution,
- (d) concentrating the neutralized solution, and
- (e) crystallizing a high-purity potassium salt from the concentrated solution obtained in step (d), thereby producing a liquid agricultural or fermentation by-product having reduced potassium content which contains an ingredient for animal feed.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.