Flowsheet Options for Cobalt Recovery in African Copper–cobalt Hydrometallurgy Circuits

The price of cobalt has increased by some 450% in the past two years, mainly due to increasing demand for lithium–ion batteries. With an official 2017 production of 64 kt, the Democratic Republic of Congo produces more than half of the world’s cobalt. African Copperbelt operations have traditionally focused on copper production; however, it has now become imperative to also consider cobalt recovery from these ores. A plethora of processing routes is possible. Most hydrometallurgical flowsheets recover cobalt from the raffinate of the low-grade copper solvent-extraction circuit. Downstream purification processes include sequential precipitation with a variety of reagents, solvent extraction, and ion exchange. Product choices include hydroxide, carbonate, sulfate, and metal cathode. This study assesses technical and economic advantages and limitations of various approaches to the hydrometallurgical processing of cobalt in an African context.     

A generalization of the octonion Fourier transform to 3-D octonion-valued signals: properties and possible applications to 3-D LTI partial differential systems

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - The paper is devoted to the development of the octonion Fourier transform (OFT) theory initiated in 2011 in articles by Hahn and Snopek. It is also...     

Structure–phase state of the surface layers in rails subjected to differential hardening

A layer-by-layer analysis of the structures, the phase compositions, and the defect substructures of differentially hardened rails has been carried by optical and transmission electron microscopy. It is found that the material volume of the rail head fillet is cooled faster than the volume located along the central axis.     

Development of Cu particles and Cu core-shell particles reinforced Al composite

Copper particles were incorporated and retained in elemental state in an aluminium matrix by friction stir processing thereby producing a non-equilibrium particulate composite. The processed Al–Cu_p composite exhibited improved strength with significantly high ductility. The composite was stable up to a temperature of more than 300°C. Thermal exposure at 350°C for more than 10 min led to diffusion of Cu atoms into the Al matrix forming a core-shell type structure in the Cu particles and thus producing an Al–Cu core-shell composite. The shell consists of multiple layers, the thickness of which was controllable.     

Sustainable ammonia production through process synthesis and global optimization

Current ammonia production technologies have a significant carbon footprint. In this study, we present a process synthesis and global optimization framework to discover the efficient utilization of renewable resources in ammonia production. Competing technologies are incorporated in a process superstructure where biomass, wind, and solar routes are compared with the natural gas-based reference case. A deterministic global optimization-based branch-and-bound algorithm is used to solve the resulting large-scale nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP). Case studies for Texas, California, and Iowa are conducted to examine the effects of different feedstock prices and availabilities. Results indicate that profitability of ammonia production is highly sensitive to feedstock and electricity prices, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) restrictions. Under strict 75% GHG reductions, biomass to ammonia route is found to be competitive with natural gas route, whereas wind and solar to ammonia routes require further improvement to compete with those two routes. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 65: e16498 2019     

Multilevel Recording in Ge2Sb2Te5 Thin Films

Semiconductors - The current–voltage characteristics measured on Ge2Sb2Te5 thin films in the current mode are studied. The effect of multilevel recording is established when applying...