HYDRO-METALLURGY
It is used for treating low grade ore using water or aqueoussolution(dil.acids/bases/salts)as leaching agent. The leaching
agent should dissolve only ore-minerals & not gangue minerals. Also,itshould be cheap & readily obtainable.
Main steps are:---------------------------------------------------------------
1)Leachingor digestion: heap/ percolation/ pressure/ bacterial.
2)Separation: sedimentation & decantation/ filtration.
3)Purification: precipitation/ ion exchange/ solvent extraction.
4)Reduction: pyro-metallurgy(gaseous reduction of aq.soln.)
or electro-metallurgy(electrowinning).
Thus, hydro-metallurgy is a process of beneficiation as well as extraction.
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