Technological mineralogy and environmental activity of zinc leaching residue from zinc hydrometallurgical process

Abstract Chemical, physical, structural and morphological properties of zinc leaching residue were examined by the combination of various detection means such as AAS, XRF, XRD, Mossbauer spectrometry, SEM-EDS, TG-DSC, XPS and FTIR. The toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) was used to investigate the environmental activity of zinc leaching residue for a short contact time. The phase composition analysis indicated that the zinc leaching residue mainly consists of super refined flocculent particles including zinc ferrite, sulfate and silicate. The physical structural analysis showed that it has a thermal instability and strong water absorption properties. The results of TCLP indicated that the amounts of Zn and Cd in the leaching solution exceed 40 and 90 times of limit, respectively, which demonstrate that this residue is unstable in weak acidic environment for a short contact time.