Effect of Grinding on Sulfuric Acid Leaching Efficiency of Nickel and Aluminum from Alkaline Leaching Residue of Spent Hydrodesulphurization Catalysts

Spent Hydrodesulphurization (HDS) catalysts contain rare metals such as molybdenum, vanadium, nickel and cobalt on an alumina carrier. In most cases, spent catalysts are treated with hydrometallurgical leaching processes such as caustic leaching and acid leaching with roasting as a pre-treatment step. In the alkaline leaching processes such as sodium carbonate roasting followed by water leaching, most of the molybdenum and vanadium are selectively leached and most of nickel is left in the residue after the alkaline leaching of spent HDS catalysts. Therefore, it is important to recover nickel from the residue. The main form of nickel in the residue is spinel, therefore, it is difficult to extract nickel from the residue using mineral acids. In the present study, the effect of grinding conditions on the leaching efficiency of nickel from the residue after sodium carbonate roasting followed by water leaching of spent HDS catalysts with sulfuric acid was investigated. The grinding speed, grinding time and the amount of residue in grinding significantly affected the leaching efficiency of nickel and aluminum. In particular, the extraction of aluminum was low in the low amount of the residue fed in grinding, because the particles were aggregated again. However, the extraction of nickel was not affected by the reaggrega- tion of particles. Therefore, the possibility of preferential leaching of nickel from aluminum was suggested.