onas Van Olmen, Sofía Riaño, Jinu Joseph John, Koen Binnemans and Tom Van Gerven of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven, have published a new article on non-aqueous solvent extraction of cobalt and nickel using undiluted ionic liquids in milliflow contacting devices. The article will be published in the October issue of the journal Chemical Engineering and Processing – Process Intensification.
Non-aqueous solvent extraction at elevated temperatures using undiluted ionic liquids in milliflow contacting devices has been identified as a feasible and alternative approach to accelerate and intensify critical metal purification and recovery. In the present research, aforementioned principles were applied on the separation of a mixture of cobalt and nickel using two quarternary phosphonium-based extraction systems. For both investigated systems, selectivity towards extraction of cobalt to the extractant was observed. Extraction performance of the system involving EG and Cyphos IL 101 was found to be superior during batch trials. As a result, this system was selected for additional experiments involving the continuous milliflow setup, making it the first application of non-aqueous solvent extraction using ionic liquids in a milliflow reactor. Depending on the processing conditions such as tube diameter (0.08” or 0.04” ID) and flow rate (0.10 mL/min to 6.00 mL/min), different flow regimes and percentages extraction were attained. Best performance in flow was obtained for more elevated temperatures (80 °C and 140 °C) and low flow rates (<0.25 mL/min), as a result of the improved kinetics and advantageous hydrodynamics. Variations of the reactor length to compare residence times under identical flow rates suggest kinetic limitations exist at lower temperatures.
Reference
Jonas Van Olmen, Sofía Riaño, Jinu J. John, Koen Binnemans, Tom Van Gerven, Non-aqueous solvent extraction of cobalt and nickel using undiluted ionic liquids in milliflow contacting devices, Chemical Engineering and Processing – Process Intensification, Volume 204, 2024, 109932, ISSN 0255-2701, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cep.2024.109932.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge funding from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), project G0D7421N.
