Copper and Nickel electrolyses

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
These metals are very close to the same properties in many aspects making the separation difficult.


What is the purpose of wanting to separate the two, what concentration are you dealing with, and a million other questions?

How many tons of this ore, or how many millions of gallons of this solution, and what are the concentrations you are dealing with?do you have to work with?



copper-nickel alloys are often in demand for their properties, coinage, boiler tubes, or heat exchangers, Cupronickel is highly resistant to corrosion from salt water, and is used in marine or shipbuilding, and for other purposes including electric/mechanical apparatus similar to brass or bronze in usefulness in different applications.
When electrolytically refining copper, if the nickel concentration gets too high in solution the copper can become contaminated as both metals plate out.

Normally when refining with electrolysis the metal like copper has to be of fairly high purity, to begin with.

Research reduction potential voltage charts, solubility charts, and general research into the subject in mining and in solvent extraction...

Not really doing much research on the subject I do not have any good answers.

I have seen some methods or discussions of separating copper and nickel, with ore, floatation, smelting processes in mining seem to be common.
Solvent extraction methods like using the solubilities of the carbonates, or something like DMG to recover nickel, chemical, kerosene-LIX 664N type, or other organic solvents extraction methods
 
This might be an nteresting article for you?
 

Attachments

  • Materiaalkundige_thermodynamica_-_Separation_of_metals_from_a_solution_Cu_Ni_through_electroly...pdf
    989.7 KB · Views: 27
My take on questions about recovering and or refining base metals is to look at how the metals are processed by the major producers , chances are they have the most cost effective methods to do so and ideas may well present themselves on how to either recover yourself or find a process to make the metals attractive to the large producers.
 
You’re looking for electrowinning processes (if it’s in solution), working on the same principle as nickel/silver separation. Pretty sure you’ll have to take the copper first as CuCl or CuCl2 but I doubt you’ll get better than 90% pure without a Vapour Phase setup
 
Has anybody found a scrapyard, which would buy typical coper-nickel (75% Cu, 25% Ni) coins for the reasonable metal value?
Nickel metal is couple of times more valuable than copper, but still local scrapyards don't want to buy these even with brass price.

It would be nice to be able to refine CuNi alloy to pure copper and nickel and sell them separately.
The article linked to this thread explains a method used to prevent Nickel from codepositing with copper, by limiting the cell voltage using reference electrode.
The method might be too complex for home refining couple of kg of metal.

Most likely copper refining cell won't work, since electrolyte would become too nickel heavy very soon and then would need to electrowin the copper and nickel separately from the sulfate solution. If following the process described in the Gent article, nickel electrowinning would be done by adding ammonia to solution. This will probably prevent reuse of the sulfate electrolyte, which will deteriorate the economy of this process.
 
Has anybody found a scrapyard, which would buy typical coper-nickel (75% Cu, 25% Ni) coins for the reasonable metal value?
Nickel metal is couple of times more valuable than copper, but still local scrapyards don't want to buy these even with brass price.
They probably don't want to touch them because it is illegal. Just as when the silver value of silver coins, e.g. dimes, quarters, half dollars, and dollars, exceeded the face value, the government made it illegal to melt them down to sell them at the metal value. Pennies and nickels are currently similarly protected.

The protection on silver based coins was eventually lifted as the mint removed them from circulation. The same will happen with pennies. There are no alternatives for nickels right now, so I don't see that prohibition be lifted any time soon.

Dave
 
Back
Top