Separation And Recovery Of By-Product And Secondary Metals With Peroxygen Chemicals

By-product metals can be a significant source of revenue for a mining operation if their recovery can be accomplished without negatively impacting primary metal recovery. The main problem encountered in separating primary and secondary metals is to selectively control the solubility of the individually important metals with¬out affecting their ultimate recoverability As a class of hydrometallurgical chemicals, peroxygens have a versatility which permits the selective recovery of individual metal species. Peroxygens function as more than simple oxidants. They are effective solubility control agents and have proven utility in complexation, precipitation, dissolution, extraction, oxidation and reductive processes Peroxygens have been used commercially to recover by-products vanadium, uranium, molybdenum, and cobalt and have proven experimentally to recover rhenium, gold, silver, manganese and zinc