Hydrometallurgy Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 2 validated, solved Hydrometallurgy simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: water, co, ni, mg, kerosene, h2so4. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: BRINE.
Cobalt/nickel solvent extraction (D2EHPA)
A laterite leach liquor (Co/Ni/Mg in dilute sulfate solution) meets a D2EHPA-in-kerosene organic phase across a 20-stage countercurrent extraction circuit run at pH 5.2 — the real industrial operating window (e.g. Bulong, Murrin Murrin, Western Australia) that exploits the ~1 pH-unit gap between Co and Ni's D2EHPA extraction isotherms: Co extracts into the organic while Ni (and Mg gangue) are rejected to the raffinate. The loaded organic then meets fresh dilute-acid strip liquor across a 10-stage strip circuit at pH 1.0 (well below Co's isotherm), reversing the equilibrium to recover a concentrated cobalt strip liquor and regenerate barren organic. Real pH-isotherm chemistry throughout (thermo/organophosphorus_extraction.py), not a fitted shortcut K_D. Honesty note: the regenerated organic and strip liquor aren't recycled back upstream (an open-loop v1, same posture as this session's other new cycle examples) — a real plant recycles both; strip_stage's distribution_coefficients is the numeric inverse of the same isotherm (1/D_Co at pH 1.0 = 1e8, i.e. strongly favors the aqueous phase) since extraction_column.py's ph= mode always assumes the aqueous-feed/organic-solvent extraction direction, not reverse stripping.
8 unit ops • BRINE
17 0
View & openBattery black-mass recycling: leach -> SX -> BPED -> LiOH crystallization
Spent-battery black mass (an NMC111-like LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 lump, sulfuric acid-leached at a screening-level yield/stoichiometry — see acid_leach.py's stated scope) dissolves into a pregnant leach solution carrying Li/Co/Ni/Mn. A 15-stage D2EHPA solvent-extraction circuit (the same real pH-isotherm chemistry the co-ni-solvent-extraction example uses, operated at pH 7.5 -- above every curated Co/Ni/Mn pH50 -- so all three transition metals extract into the kerosene organic phase while Li, which has no curated D2EHPA isotherm, stays in the aqueous raffinate untouched) purifies the liquor before it ever reaches the lithium-recovery chemistry. A Faraday's-law bipolar-membrane electrodialysis (BPED) cell (the same real electrochemistry as the direct-lithium-extraction example, sized up for this liquor's larger Li flow) converts Li+ to LiOH, which an MSMPR crystallizer takes to battery-grade LiOH solid. Every step reuses an already-real, independently-tested unit op (acid_leach.py, extraction_column.py, bped.py, crystallizer.py) chained into the one train none of them had been assembled into before. Honesty notes: no acid-consumption or neutralization mass balance between the strongly-acidic leach liquor and the pH-7.5 SX stage (the pH is an operator-set circuit condition, the same simplification co-ni-solvent-extraction already makes, not a titration model); the recovered Co/Ni/Mn organic concentrate leaves as a single product stream rather than being split into separate refined metal products (a further SX/strip train, out of scope here).
11 unit ops • BRINE
19 0
View & open