Sulfate process
AssigneeBHP Billiton Innovation Pty Ltd.
InventorsAlan David Stuart, John Andrew Lawson, Christopher Brett Ward, Hong Peng
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Abstract
A sulfate process for producing titania from a titaniferous material (as herein defined) including a step of leaching said titaniferous material with a leachant to form a process solution that includes an acidic solution of titanyl sulfate and iron sulfate, wherein said sulfate process further includes a filtration step comprising filtering said leachant to at least substantially remove titanyl sulfate particles from said leachant prior to supplying said leachant to said leach step.
Claims30
A sulfate process for producing titania from a titaniferous material comprising:
- a. providing a leachant including particulate titanyl sulfate;
- b. filtering the leachant to substantially remove titanyl sulfate particles that are not able to pass through a filter having 1 μm openings to provide a filtered leachant;
- c. leaching said titaniferous material with the filtered leachant to form a process solution that includes an acidic solution of titanyl sulfate and iron sulfate wherein the filtering is effective to prevent unwanted precipitation of titanyl sulfate during leaching, and subsequent downstream steps comprising;
- d. separating the process solution from a residual solid phase;
- e. precipitating titanyl sulfate from the process solution from step (d);
- f. separating the precipitated titanyl sulfate from the process solution;
- g. treating the precipitated titanyl sulfate to produce a titanyl sulfate solution;
- h. hydrolyzing the titanyl sulfate to form a solid phase containing hydrated titanium oxides and a liquid phase;
- i. separating the solid phase and the liquid phase;
- and,
- j. calcining the solid phase from step (i) to form titania.
A sulfate process for producing titania from a solid titaniferous material includes the steps of:
- (a) leaching the solid titaniferous material with a filtered leachant and forming a process solution that includes an acidic solution of titanyl sulfate and iron sulfate;
- (b) separating the process solution and a residual solid phase from the leach step (a);
- (c) precipitating titanyl sulfate from the process solution from step (b);
- (d) separating the precipitated titanyl sulfate from the process solution;
- (e) treating the precipitated titanyl sulfate and producing a solution containing titanyl sulfate;
- (f) hydrolysing the titanyl sulfate in the solution of step (e) and forming a solid phase containing hydrated titanium oxides and a liquid phase;
- (g) separating the solid phase containing hydrated titanium oxides and the liquid phase;
- and
- (h) calcining the solid phase from step (g) and forming titania, wherein said process further includes the step:
- (i) removing iron sulfate from the leach liquor from step (b) and/or the depleted liquor from step (d) and separating removed iron sulfate from the leach liquor, and wherein said process further includes the step:
- (j) returning the process solution from step (d) to use for preparing the filtered leachant for step (a) by filtering the process solution to remove particles that are not able to pass through a filter having 5 μm openings.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.