Recovery of Copper and Cyanide through Emulsion Liquid Membrane with Quaternary Amine Salt as the Mobile Carrier

ABSTRACT

A fundamental study on using emulsion liquid membranes(ELMs) with modified quaternary amine salt to extract copper and cyanide from waste cyanide solutions has been conducted. Both copper and cyanide can be effectively extracted by ELMs. A low pH of the external phase favors copper and cyanide extraction. A high molar ratio of CN/Cu tends to suppress copper extraction and results in more extraction of free cyanide. A high copper concentration in the external phase results in high transport of copper and cyanide. ELMs formed with the recovered membrane materials can be effectively re-used for recovering copper and cyanide from waste cyanide solutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emulsion liquid membrane
• copper
• cyanide
• modified quaternary amine

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Mr. Fu for his generous help on the project. The project was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFC0604604) and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of China (Grant No. N130202001).