MRT – Proven Technology for Processing
Metals in Solutions
BATEMAN has entered into an agreement with IBC Advanced Technologies,
Inc., USA, to establish a new company MRT AFRICA. The joint venture
will market engineered process plants using IBC’s molecular-recognition
technology (MRT). MRT AFRICA has an exclusive licence for Africa but
will also operate outside Africa on a case-y-case basis. This combination
of IBC’s processing technology and BATEMAN’s capability s
engineer and project manager, brings novel solutions to the minerals
and metals processing industry.
Formulated from a Nobel prize-winning concept, MRT provides rapid,
selective extraction and recovery of cations and anions from process
or waste streams and enables commercial metallurgical separations to
enhance processes that were previously not technically and are economically
feasible. In specific cases complete recovery of high purity (99,95
to 99,99 %) marketable metals is possible after a single-pass process.
The technology utilises custom-designed organic crown molecules or other
chemical ligands containing atoms and functional groups which selectively
target specific metals. Selectivity is determined by the chemical nature
of these molecules and their overall size and shape. When bonded to
solidhydrophilic supports, such as silica orpolyacrylate, the ligands
can be incorporated into resin beads, porous membranes or gels and contacted
with the solutions to be processed.
Applications have been developed for many base metals and include the
removal and refining of copper, cobalt and nickel from zinc and copper
electrolytes, raffinates or bleed streams; of copper, zinc, nickel,
manganese, iron and other metals from acid mine streams; and the removal
of impurities such as bismuth, antimony, germanium, fluoride and chloride
from copper and zinc refinery streams.
The removal of copper, cobalt and nickel in zinc purification will
be piloted soon. Several industrial applications are now well-proven,
for example the commercial recovery of cathode-quality copper from an
acid mine-drainage stream at flow rates up to 20 000 l/min. A feature
of MRT is that trace amounts of contaminants can be removed from large
volumes of solution lowing at many bed volumes per minute. MRT has enhanced
the commercial recovery of platinum, alladium and rhodium from spent
automobile catalytic converters as a result of the improved recoveries
achieved and the reduction of processing costs and metal inventories
in the process. Palladium is separated and purified using MRT at Impala
Platinum Limited–Refineries, Springs, RSA. Impala developed the
process and BATEMAN built this plant in 1994/7 which was the first platinum
group metals refinery to use this technology. The MRT system reduces
the palladium processing time and costs and increases the palladium
separation efficiency and recovery, while having a beneficial effect
on the environment.
MRT has also been proven for the efficient treatment of high copper-gold
ores, with the recovery of old followed by copper and recycling of the
cyanide. It can also be used for primary gold refining and tailings
dam recovery.
In another application traces of mercury are removed from concentrated
sulphuric acid, a by-product of various metallurgical roasting and smelting
operations. More smelters are having to produce mercury-free acid in
order to meet new stringent regulations and this was not achievable
with traditional ion exchange systems which are ineffective when used
with high acid or relatively low mercury concentrations.
The technical and economic feasibility of industrial applications of
MRT will re-evaluated for clients so that complete solutions for their
metal refining and recovery needs can be offered. MRT Africa will supply
commercial plants, resins and consulting services following the completion
of preliminary studies. Although the initial focus will be on minerals,
there are many potential applications of MRT in the chemical industry
which will be developed in due course.
Kindly contact Neill Birdsey, General Manager, Small Projects,
on +27-11-899-3191 or email tawana@batemanengineering.com
for more information.
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