The effect of ammonium chloride leaching on ilmenite from Bukit Kelip Terengganu
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Date
2019-07
Authors
Nur Farhana Binti Yunus
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Abstract
Becher process is to upgrade ilmenite ores into synthetic rutile. The process involves two main steps “reduction” and “aeration”. Carbothermal reduction of ilmenite ores were conducted to reduce the iron oxide into metallic iron before aeration leaching. The carbothermal reduction was done in a horizontal electrical tube furnace at 1250°C in argon-CNG gas atmosphere, under a soaking time of 3 hours. Mukah coal were used as the reductant and the carbon to oxygen molar ratio was set to 1:1.5. The metallic iron formed was observed by XRD and SEM-EDX analysis. The XRD result show the high peak of metallic iron was formed after the reduction. The aeration leaching of reduced ilmenite was carried out at three different parameters i.e. temperature, the concentration of ammonium chloride and the leaching time. The solid liquid ratio for this experiment was set to 1:4. The efficiency of aeration leaching was examined by using full factorial design method. From the analysis using ANOVA, temperature at 90°C gave the most significant effect in the extraction of the iron. Complete iron extract at 3 to 5 hours of aeration leaching and after 5 hours it not leached significantly. Aeration leaching of reduced ilmenite in Bukit Kelip was successful with maximum extraction of iron of 97.02% at 90 °C of temperature with 0.5 M NH4Cl concentration for 7 hours. About 80% of TiO2 was obtained from this study. As a conclusion, ilmenite from Bukit Kelip Terengganu has a potential value to be upgraded to synthetic rutile via aeration leaching with ammonium chloride.