Abstract:
With the development and application of rubidium and its compounds in emerging fields in recent years, the market for rubidium has found an ever-increasing expansion. At present, rubidium ores are treated by acid method, alkali method and acid-base combination method. However, most of these technologies have disadvantages of large acid-alkali consumption, low leaching efficiency and inefficient resource utilization. To solve these defects of the existing technology, we propose a new technology for the treatment of rubidium ores, molten water quenching plus alkali immersion. Through molten water quenching, the stable silicon-oxygen tetrahedral structure in rubidium ore is destroyed. Thus, water quenching slag exists in a highly active state. For the target of clarifying the leaching activity of water-quenched slag, the shrinkage core model was used to study the influence of leaching temperature and water-quenched slag particle size on the leaching effect of rubidium. The results show: compared to the traditional alkali treatment of rubidium ores, melt water quenching-alkali leaching method achieves high efficient leaching of rubidium at low temperatures and low alk ali concentrations. The apparent activation energy of the alkali leaching reaction is 37.41 kJ/mol. The alkali leaching process of water quenched slag accords with the mixed control model, and the leached slag is analcime.