Nickel recovery using cementation

[shineymetals]

any thoughts about using iron, aluminum, or zinc to displace Ni from a mixed metal, hydrochloric acid solution? Other metals present are Fe, Mn, and Zn. What conditions would be best for this attempt?

wayne wilson

 

[orvi]

Nickel and iron can be separated hydrolytically. At pH 4, iron is fully precipitated from solution, and does not form soluble ammonia complexes. Thus you can rise pH to 4, set it for very lengthy filtration, and by doing this you can get rid of iron.

 

[olawlor]

Won't scrap iron metal cement out just the nickel from the solution?

I don't have experience with nickel chloride solutions, but the electrochemistry sounds correct, and this patent cites adding iron powder as the standard way to recover nickel metal from spent ferric chloride plating solutions: WO2006028303A1 - Method for recovery of nikel and regeneration of etching solution from a spent fecl3 etching solution - Google Patents