A new way of recovering vanadium from iron/vanadium slag

A process for recovery of vanadium from iron/vanadium slag involving leaching with sulfuric acid,solvent extraction,precipitation of V2O5 with ammonia,and roasting has been developed.Soaking the raw material in dilute sulfuric acid allows over 95% of the vanadium to be directly extracted.Using an accelerant enhances the leaching efficiency compared with the conventional method.Ammonia was used to precipitate the vanadium,avoiding the high concentration of ammonium salts usually employed,leading to an increased purity of the product.The total recovery efficiency of vanadium was above 86%,which is more than 20% higher than that obtained in the conventional process.Furthermore,the new process does not cause air pollution since no HCl or Cl2,are released by calcination of the raw material.