Nickel Recovery

Nickel, a silver-white, hard, ductile and ferromagnetic metal element that is highly polished and resistant to corrosion. Nickel is a pro-iron element, so nickel-based minerals are mostly laterite nickel ore.

Nickel is often used for electroplating because of its good corrosion resistance. In recent years, nickel sulfate has been used as a ternary positive electrode material and has received much attention.

Driving by the strong EV demand, Nickel demand is increasing year by year, the traditional method of Ni recovery is by solvent extraction. Pretreatment by precipitating Fe3+ is needed before extraction. During the precipitation, max 10% Nickel would enter into the residues and are very hard to recover(high loss of nickel). On the other hand Saponification of the extractant will consume NaOH.

Seplite® LSC495 of Bis-picolylamine groups which is specially designed for direct extracting nickel from acid leaching liquors of laterite.

SEPLITE® LSC495 Bis-picolylamine Resin has high selectivity to Ni and is not affected by Fe in solution. Therefore no pretreatment of Iron is needed which greatly decreases the loss of Ni. To regenerate LSC495, sulfuric acid was used, no-saponification process therefore decreases the overall OPEX.

The most important is that yield of resins to Ni being over 98%, which significantly decreased overall Nickel loss.

Sunresin has a lot knowledge for solvent extraction, LSC495 Bis-picolylamine Resins supplied another technical route for customer choices on nickel recovery.