Abstract:
There are numerous issues in the mainstream process of alkali decomposition of tungsten ores, such as large water consumption, large amounts of wastewater, and high processing costs, which add the dual pressure of economic and environmental protection on smelting enterprises and prevent them from meeting the industry’s development needs. As a result of a series of studies on scheelite roasting and decomposition processes, our team innovatively proposed the use of acid roasting to develop the process of sulfate decomposition of scheelite so that CaWO
4 in the scheelite could be transformed directly into WO
3. In addition to WO
3, the roasting products contained soluble Na
2SO
4 and insoluble CaSO
4. Because CaSO
4 can be dissolved in hydrochloric acid, it can be separated from WO
3 via hydrochloric acid leaching to further enrich WO
3, resulting in a higher-grade material for subsequent procedures. In the presence of Na
2SO
4, its effect on the dissolution of WO
3 or CaSO
4 in hydrochloric acid will directly determine the separation effect of calcium and tungsten in the roasting products. Thus, using pure substances such as WO
3, CaSO
4, and Na
2SO
4 as raw materials, the dissolution behaviors of WO
3, CaSO
4, and WO
3–CaSO
4 in HCl–Na
2SO
4 solution were investigated separately
via isothermal equilibrium dissolution to investigate the effects of hydrochloric acid concentration, sodium sulfate concentration, dissolution time, and dissolution temperature on the solubility of WO
3, CaSO
4, and WO
3–CasO
4 in HCl–Na
2SO
4 solution. The analysis shows that WO
3 and CaSO
4 have very different solubilities in hydrochloric acid. The solubility of CaSO
4 in hydrochloric acid increases with temperature and hydrochloric acid concentration when the dissolution time is 0.5–2.5 h, the hydrochloric acid concentration is 1–5 mol·L
−1, the molar ratio of HCl and Na
2SO
4 is 1∶2–2∶1, and the dissolution temperature is 40–80 ℃. The solubility of calcium sulfate in hydrochloric acid increases with the increase in temperature and hydrochloric acid concentration. When the temperature is 80 ℃ and the concentration of hydrochloric acid is 3 mol·L
−1, the solubility of calcium sulfate in hydrochloric acid reaches a peak of 55 g·L
−1. Due to the same ion effect, Na
2SO
4 can significantly reduce the solubility of CaSO
4 and narrow the solubility difference between CaSO
4 and WO
3 in hydrochloric acid. CaSO
4 has the highest solubility in HCl–Na
2SO
4 solution at 17.04 g·L
−1. The dissolved WO
3, whose solubility is maintained at 0.3–3 g·L
−1, can be effectively recovered by using the current mature low-tungsten recovery process. Therefore, when CaSO
4 and WO
3 coexist in hydrochloric acid, increasing the concentration of hydrochloric acid and the dissolution temperature while decreasing the concentration of Na
2SO
4 can increase the solubility difference between them and achieve separation.