SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR SELECTIVE PROXIMITY COBALT RECOVERY
Various embodiments provide a method comprising leaching a cobalt bearing material to form a slurry, filtering the slurry to yield solids and a cobalt bearing liquid phase, and forwarding the solids to a second leaching operation.
1 . A method comprising:
leaching a cobalt bearing material to form a slurry;
filtering the slurry to yield solids and a cobalt bearing liquid phase; and
forwarding the solids to a second leaching operation.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the second leaching operation is a copper leaching operation.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the cobalt bearing material comprises cobalt hydroxide.
4 . The method of claim 3 , wherein the cobalt hydroxide is formed by precipitating cobalt II with magnesia.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein the cobalt hydroxide is formed by precipitating cobalt II with lime.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the leaching comprises addition of sulfur dioxide.
7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
performing a solution extraction of the cobalt bearing liquid phase to yield a purified cobalt bearing liquid phase;
subjecting the purified cobalt bearing liquid phase to a copper ion exchange using a copper selective ion exchange resin.
8 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising purging the copper selective ion exchange resin of copper with an elution liquid.
9 . The method of claim 8 , recycling the elution liquid to a copper leaching operation.
10 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising electrowinning cobalt metal from a first portion of the purified cobalt bearing liquid phase.
11 . A method comprising:
adding magnesia to a cobalt bearing material to form a first slurry;
separating the first slurry into a saleable solid product and a liquid phase;
adding lime to the liquid phase to form a second slurry; and
separating the second slurry into a solid product and a liquid phase.
12 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising leaching a portion of the saleable solid product and a portion of the solid product to form a leached slurry.
13 . The method of claim 12 , further comprising:
filtering the leached slurry to yield a cobalt bearing liquid phase;
bleeding a first portion of the cobalt bearing liquid phase to a cobalt gypsum precipitation process.
14 . The method of claim 13 , further comprising:
performing a solution extraction of a second portion of the cobalt bearing liquid phase to yield a purified cobalt bearing liquid phase;
precipitating cobalt gypsum by adding lime to a first portion of the purified cobalt bearing liquid phase in the cobalt gypsum precipitation process.
15 . The method of claim 14 , further comprising recycling the cobalt gypsum to the leaching.
16 . The method of claim 15 , further comprising subjecting a second portion of the purified cobalt bearing liquid phase to an additional conditioning step to yield a conditioned cobalt bearing liquid.
17 . The method of claim 16 , further comprising electrowinning cobalt metal from a first portion of the conditioned cobalt bearing liquid.
18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the electrowinning comprises a bagged anode process.
19 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the electrowinning comprises a free anode process.
20 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the electrowinning comprises depositing cobalt metal rounds on a masked cathode.