| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
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| Symposium
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REWAS 2025: Sustainable Practices in Strategic and Critical Raw Materials: Exploring Supply Chain Resilience and Recycling Innovations
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| Presentation Title |
Screening Alternative Sources of Critical Metals via Alkaline Fusion: The Effect of Flux on Digestion Efficiency |
| Author(s) |
Vikram Kumar, John Scott, Linduo Zhao, Margarita Fyodorovna Bargon, Aniruddha Baral, Jeffery Roesler, Brajendra Sharma, Nishant Garg |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Vikram Kumar |
| Abstract Scope |
Industrial by-products are a potential resource for fulfilling the demand for critical metals. Critical metal concentrations in industrial by-products can show significant fluctuation, necessitating the identification of by-products with concentrations suitable for metal recovery via ICP-based methods. However, ICP-based methods require the conversion of solid by-products into a liquid form through acid digestion. Acid digestion requires significant time (~hours) and can often fail to dissolve critical metals residing in refractory minerals. These limitations of acid digestion can be potentially overcome with alkaline fusion. Here, we evaluate the feasibility of employing alkaline fusion using LiBO2 and Li2B4O7 as fluxes as an alternative to acid digestion. By analyzing two standard reference materials, we report alkaline fusion with LiBO2 as flux can completely dissolve critical metals from siliceous and non-siliceous by-products (>85% recovery). These findings suggest that alkaline fusion with LiBO2 can screen industrial by-products with concentrations suitable for metal recovery. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Recycling and Secondary Recovery, Sustainability, Hydrometallurgy |