Phytomining: a win-win partnership between agronomy and chemical engineering to recycle metals dispersed in soil. GPE (original) (raw)
Huge areas in the world are covered by soils containing high contents of metal. Phytomining aims at recovering these metals by growing hyperaccumulating plants and treating the metal-rich biomass by pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical processes. This contribution is an overview of the results we have obtained for several years in Ni phytomining. Hyperaccumulating plants, Alyssum murale , are grown in the Balkans (Albania) and high Ni yields are reached: 100 kg Ni per ha. Once harvested and dried, A. murale biomass is incinerated and the ashes are treated by a hydrometallurgical process that we have designed and patented to produce a high value added salt: sulfate and ammonium nickel double salt hexahydrate, used for electrolytic surface treatment. The process steps are described and the main results presented. Our results have demonstrated the feasibility of the synthesis of this nickel double salt after phytoextraction. This process is currently up-scaled to the pilot scale. A ...
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