Abstract
The acidic wastewater produced by the wet production of activated clay contains valuable components such as iron and aluminum. The precipitation method was successfully introduced to separate iron and aluminum from the activated clay production wastewater step by step, which can not only recover the valuable components, but also avoid environmental pollution. In the separation process, gypsum, iron aluminum phosphate, alumina, and sodium sulfate were prepared, and the phase compositions of separation products were analyzed by XRD and IR. The main influencing factors in the separation of iron and aluminum components were studied by single factor experiment. The results show that at the optimized conditions, phosphorus/iron molar ratio 6.0, the system pH 3.0, the reaction temperature 343 K, and the reaction time 90 min, the iron(iii) ion in the system can form a sodium-containing aluminum iron phosphate double salt, and the filtrate after separating Fe3+ and part of Al3+ can meet the requirements for forming high-purity Al2O3. During the phosphate precipitation process, the hypothesis should be correct that Al3+ reacts with
PO
4
3
−
{\text{PO}}_{4}^{3-}
to form an AlPO4 skeleton, Fe3+ isomorphically replaces Al3+ in the [AlO4] tetrahedron, and adsorption occurs simultaneously, with Na+ occupying the terminal acid sites, P(Al)–OH.