β Scribed by J.J. Jakosky
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
ONE of the main deterrents in the use of sulphuric acid leaching and electrolysis for extracting copper from its ores has been the fouling of the solutions with soluble impurities of the ore, especially iron and aluminum.
Any simple, inexpensive means of removing these two impurities would be useful in leaching and refining copper, in purifying bluestone-plant solutions, and in treating mine water that contains copper.
The writers, therefore, took up this problem.
A study of previous work by various investigators showed that the removal of iron and aluminum, and incidentally arsenic, antimony, bismuth, and tin, from copper sulphate solutions, has been effected satisfactorily in a number of processes, but details were lacking on the best operating conditions, methods of controlling the reactions, or the basis of procedure.
The writers then selected for further research an investigation of hydrolytic agents, as the most promising field of work. The limitations of cost, availability, and suitability to other conditions limited the tests chiefly to carbonates and oxides of copper and calcium.
It was found that ferric iron and aluminum can be precipitated from copper solutions, and ferrous iron oxidized by aeration. The removal of ferrous iron was very slow, but the use of higher temperatures and fine-bubble aeration in an apparatus devised by the writers gave better results.
Further tests on a commercial scale show that practically all of the iron can be removed, but as the reaction approaches completion, the rate of oxidation and removal becomes very slow. Further details will be found in Technical Paper 359, recently issued by the Bureau of Mines.
THE ELECTRICAL MANUFACTURE OF CARBON BLACK. By J. J. Jakosky.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Manufacture of Carbon Disulphide in the Electric Furnace.--George A. Richter of the Research Department of Brown and Company, Berlin, N. H., contributed to the forty-second general meeting of the American Electrochemical Society a paper embodying the results of experiments on the production of carbo