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Study on Pure Mercurous Chloride Leaching with Sodium Thiosulfate

  • METALLURGY OF NONFERROUS METALS
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Abstract

Mercurous chloride (Hg2Cl2), also known as Calomel, is a typical mercury-containing mineral found in nature. In this work, the leaching behaviour of pure mercurous chloride dissolved in pure water and in thiosulfate solution was investigated. The mercurous chloride hardly dissolved in sulfuric acid solution at pH of 3 and pure water at pH of 6.4, with the corresponding maximum Hg extraction percentage at 3.1 and 7.5% respectively. However, the Hg extraction percentage increased to 45.8% in sodium hydroxide solution at pH of 11.2. The mercury extraction percentage reached a high of 62.6% in thiosulfate solution, and the leaching kinetics results show that the activation energy is 6.6 kJ/mol. This study indicates that the thiosulfate solution can efficiently extract mercury from mercurous chloride.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The project was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51374054) and the National Science Foundation (IRES 1358088).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for High Purity Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan University of Science and Technology, 471023 , Luoyang, China

    Chao Han & Guangxin Wang

  2. School of Metallurgy, Northeastern University, 110819, Shenyang, China

    Wei Wang & Feng Xie

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Florida, 33620, Tampa, FL, USA

    Alex Volinsky

  4. College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida, 32603, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Moses Gekhtman

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  1. Chao Han
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  2. Wei Wang
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  3. Feng Xie
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  4. Guangxin Wang
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  5. Alex Volinsky
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Correspondence to Chao Han.

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Chao Han, Wang, W., Xie, F. et al. Study on Pure Mercurous Chloride Leaching with Sodium Thiosulfate. Russ. J. Non-ferrous Metals 59, 589–595 (2018). https://doi.org/10.3103/S1067821218060056

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