The factor affective quality and quantity of copper electrowinning process

Electrometallurgy is the last and the most important process for the recovery and therefore produces copper from the mining industry [1]. Copper is frequently present in the earth’s crust ascopper- iron- sulfide and copper sulfide minerals. The concentration of these minerals in an ore body is low. Copper also occurs to a lesser degree in oxidized minerals (carbonates, oxides, hydroxy-silicates and sulfates). Copper metal is usually produced from these minerals byleaching, solvent extraction and electrowinning [2]. This study investigates some factors that are effective in electrowinning i.e., time of reaction, concentration of copper, purity of cathode, the amount of copper extracted, surface morphology and other metals with copper in mineral. Othermetals in ores of copper are: iron, lead, zinc, manganese, nickel and cobalt [3]. The concentration of copper and time of reaction are set to get the best copper quantity and qualityextracted. To get bright and non-porous surface various factors were investigated. Althoughdifferent conditions may lead to dendrite growth with voids between the crystals or resulted in powdery surface. An important factor in the quality and brightness of surface is the presence of organic matter (polyacrylamide) to produce smooth, bright and compact copper electrodeposits[1,4,5]. Different metals have shown different effect on the electrowinning. It has also shown that manganese ions impurity from 2-10 percent of the copper have an effect on increasing the rate of corrosion of the anodes and thereby the incorporation of lead on the cathodes [6,7].Although the presence of iron is detrimental in relation to cathode current efficiency, about 10.0 g L-1 of iron in the electrolyte has been shown beneficial effects in lowering the solution potential and smoothing the cathode surface. Cobalt sulphate is normally added to provide about100-200 mg L-1 Co2+ in the electrolyte to reduce both the corrosion rate and oxygen overpotential of the Pb anodes. The addition of cobalt(II) ion also reduces the rate of electrolyticproduction of manganese dioxide [8]. The data were obtained to provide more information for industrial processing of copper. The copper were quantitatively measured by flame atomic absorption.

Keywords:

Copper , Electrowinning , Morphology , Bright , Corrosion