Reduction of Phosphorus Content of Koton-Karfe Iron Ore in Sulphuric Acid (H₂SO₄)

Abstract

The dissolving kinetics of iron ore in sulfuric acid solution were investigated. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis was used to determine the ore's elemental and oxide contents as follows: Fe (40.715 %), Cu (0.00040 %), Mg (0.17 %), Mn (1.409 %), K (0.270 %), Ca (0.3266 %), and Zn (0.0331 %) were found in the iron ore. With increasing acid concentration, temperature, and reaction time, the dissolution rate increased. The best parameters for dissolving 69 % of the iron ore were found to be 1.0 M sulphuric acid, 550C dissolution temperature, 120 min dissolution time, and ore particle size of 0.15 to 0.3 mm. Film diffusion: Xk1t = XB was used to investigate the kinetics of the dissolution process. The results revealed that the Film diffusion layer was the rate-determining phase in the dissolution process, and that the reaction followed this mechanism. The apparent activation energy (Ea) and order of reaction, respectively, were found to be 11.1kJ/mol and roughly 0.3, indicating that the reaction is half order. The flame spectrophotometric analysis shows that the least phosphorus content of 0.0074% and highest phosphorus content of 0.0247% were achieved in this study. These are within the acceptable limit of 0.075 % phosphorus content required in industrial application of iron ore.