copper zinc oxide catalyst how to refine?

[bee]

i have few tons catalyst which i buy recently with a bulk scrap quantity. its almost 34 tons the XRF result of catalyst are copper 71% and 27% zinc i think the moisture and carbon is 2 or 3%.
as these are oxides what is best method to recover the copper and zinc. is the wet chemical process is good or should i melt it first . if the melt then i cant follow the electro refining i am looking some thing which is convert the oxide to metal and then any chemical which is convert zinc to something during melt and copper left into furnace some thing like that my intention is get two metal separate but if any chemical recovery is cheap i ,ll also try to follow. i have small high school chemistry back ground and good to refine the jewelers waist. have a small refinery with a good furnace with fume hood.
any help should be appreciated greatly.
thanks
bee

 

[butcher]

If you have to ask that question I say sell it, otherwise you will most likely just make a big dangerous mess and loose your money and metals.
even if you do recover these as powders, or salts can you sell the powdered metals or salts of metals?

copper would be easier to recover than zinc, zinc is very reactive.



copper is not too reactive to acid, being below hydrogen in the reactivity series of metals, HCl will not attack copper without an oxidizer (oxygen, H2O2,HNO3, air...)
copper chloride made with copper, HCl and H2O2 will attack copper,

HNO3 nitric acid will oxidize and attack copper but it is expensive.

H2SO4 Sulfuric acid can barely oxidize and attack copper (taking enough time it will, but with an oxidizer and heat are added the will work go faster).

OK so from this we can try and decide on a leach.

Now with this much material we need to be conscious of waste solution and volumes of leach and waste, cementing copper out of solution is an option for small volumes but this would create lots of solution to dispose of properly, we would possibly go broke buying acid and treating waste, electrolysis could deplete solution of metal and be reused with some care, this would lower volume of acid needed and waste we would have to deal with.

We could go on but why I do not see this whole thing as a good idea.

I think you best bet is to find a market for what you have now and take the money and invest in another more profitable material

 

[g_axelsson]

i have few tons catalyst which i buy recently with a bulk scrap quantity. its almost 34 tons the XRF result of catalyst are copper 71% and 27% zinc i think the moisture and carbon is 2 or 3%.
as these are oxides what is best method to recover the copper and zinc.

I think your XRF is fooling you, it obviously doesn't see the oxygen. If what you got is zinc and copper oxide then you could never have 98% pure metal. Oxides of copper could be either Cu₂O or CuO. (63.5/(63.5+16) = 80% or 63.5*2/(63.5*2+16) = 89% ) and zinc oxide is ZnO (65.4/(65.4+16) = 80% metal, 20% oxygen). So you could have at maximum somewhere between 80% and 90% metal in your powder. You should incinerate some of your powder and see how much weigh it loses to decide how much carbon and moisture there is, then you don't have to guess.

I can't say that I would even try to refine this or done anything like this before so my following comment is pure speculation.
The best way to treat this is to treat it as a raw copper ore, add charcoal in the right proportions and smelt it into brass. The zinc will turn into metal and alloy with the copper. Then sell it as brass to a copper smelter.

Before man could extract pure zinc we could make brass by combining copper and zinc ore when smelting. Before zinc oxide is turned into pure metal by reduction with carbon, we reach so high temperatures that the zinc goes off as a gas, but when alloyed with copper it could stand the temperatures a lot better. But it will still boil off some zinc which will burn in air and create dangerous zinc smoke.
Before testing anything, read up on the dangers with zink. (For example, welding zinc treated iron)

Göran

 

[bee]

thanks Goran and Butcher
i am working to convert into brass right now and its pretty much easy and cheap
thanks
bee

 

[g_axelsson]

Great to hear! 8)

If you don't mind, could you describe the process a bit more detailed. I'm curious on how you do it and how close my ramblings got. It is also good to give back some information to the forum, it will help the next guy that runs into a similar problem.

And if you feel for it, a small monetary contribution to the forum doesn't hurt either.

Göran