中國有色金屬學報(英文版)
Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China
| Vol. 27 No. 4 April 2017 |
（1. Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China;
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China）
Abstract:CuO was used as a catalyst in the concentrated KOH solution to enhance the leaching of chromium from the chromite ore. The impacts of temperature, KOH-to-chromite ore mass ratio, CuO-to-chromite ore mass ratio, and gas flow rate on the chromium leaching rate were investigated. The results indicated that CuO played an important role in improving the chromium leaching rate. The leaching rate reached 98% after leaching for 6 h when CuO was applied, whereas it was only 60.8% without CuO under the same reaction conditions: temperature 230 °C, KOH-to-ore mass ratio 6:1, stirring speed 700 r/min, gas flow rate 1 L/min. According to the kinetics study, the catalytic oxidation was controlled by surface chemical reaction and the activation energy was calculated to be 15.79 kJ/mol when the temperature was above 230 °C. In contrast, without CuO, the rate-determining step was external diffusion {Chen, 2013 #2}and the apparent activation energy was 38.01 kJ/mol.
Key words: chromite ore; copper oxide; leaching; catalytic oxidation
