Applications of bauxite residue: A mini-review

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (10) ◽  
pp. 999-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay S Verma ◽  
Narendra M Suri ◽  
Suman Kant

Bauxite residue is the waste generated during alumina production by Bayer’s process. The amount of bauxite residue (40–50 wt%) generated depends on the quality of bauxite ore used for the processing. High alkalinity and high caustic content in bauxite residue causes environmental risk for fertile soil and ground water contamination. The caustic (NaOH) content in bauxite residue leads to human health risks, like dermal problems and irritation to eyes. Moreover, disposal of bauxite residue requires a large area; such problems can only be minimised by utilising bauxite residue effectively. For two decades, bauxite residue has been used as a binder in cement industries and filler/reinforcement for composite materials in the automobile industry. Valuable metals and oxides, like alumina (Al2O3), titanium oxide (TiO2) and iron oxide Fe2O3, were extracted from bauxite residue to reduce waste. Bauxite residue was utilised in construction and structure industries to make geopolymers. It was also used in the making of glass-ceramics and a coating material. Recently bauxite residue has been utilised to extract rare earth elements like scandium (Sc), yttrium (Y), lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy). In this review article, the mineralogical characteristics of bauxite residue are summarised and current progresses on utilisation of bauxite residue in different fields of science and engineering are presented in detail.

Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 951
Author(s):  
Kyriaki Kiskira ◽  
Theopisti Lymperopoulou ◽  
Lamprini-Areti Tsakanika ◽  
Charalampos Pavlopoulos ◽  
Konstantina Papadopoulou ◽  
...  

The disposal of voluminous, highly alkaline, bauxite residue (BR), the industrial by-product of alumina production by the Bayer process, constitutes an intricate global environmental problem. BR, containing valuable metals such as rare-earth elements (REEs)—in particular, scandium (Sc)—can be used as a secondary source for REE extraction. The scope of this study was the investigation of bioleaching as an innovative and environmentally friendly approach for the extraction of Sc from BR. The bioleaching parameters were studied on Greek BR and experiments were performed using different microbial cultures and solid to liquid ratios (S/L). The maximum extraction of Sc was 42% using Acetobacter tropicalis in a one-step bioleaching process at 1% S/L. The main organic acids produced were acetic, oxalic, and citric. The bioleaching data indicated a probable synergistic effect of the different organic acids produced by microorganisms along with a more targeted leaching mechanism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 881-883 ◽  
pp. 663-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ao Ping He ◽  
Zhi Liu Hu ◽  
De Guang Cao ◽  
Jian Min Zeng ◽  
Bo Lin Wu ◽  
...  

Red mud is a solid waste which is generated in the process of alumina production and is of highly alkaline. Red mud has very complex compositions, but contains a variety of rare and valuable metals. In addition, its high alkalinity is a severe pollution to water, land, air and environment, which has been one of the main factors to affect the sustainable development of aluminum industry. The characterization of red mud, the extraction of valuable metals from red mud, the utilization of red mud in construction materials, environmental restoration materials and other fields are introduced in this paper.


Author(s):  
G. Lehmpfuhl

Introduction In electron microscopic investigations of crystalline specimens the direct observation of the electron diffraction pattern gives additional information about the specimen. The quality of this information depends on the quality of the crystals or the crystal area contributing to the diffraction pattern. By selected area diffraction in a conventional electron microscope, specimen areas as small as 1 µ in diameter can be investigated. It is well known that crystal areas of that size which must be thin enough (in the order of 1000 Å) for electron microscopic investigations are normally somewhat distorted by bending, or they are not homogeneous. Furthermore, the crystal surface is not well defined over such a large area. These are facts which cause reduction of information in the diffraction pattern. The intensity of a diffraction spot, for example, depends on the crystal thickness. If the thickness is not uniform over the investigated area, one observes an averaged intensity, so that the intensity distribution in the diffraction pattern cannot be used for an analysis unless additional information is available.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Moazzami Gudarzi ◽  
Maryana Asaad ◽  
Boyang Mao ◽  
Gergo Pinter ◽  
Jianqiang Guo ◽  
...  

AbstractThe use of two-dimensional materials in bulk functional applications requires the ability to fabricate defect-free 2D sheets with large aspect ratios. Despite huge research efforts, current bulk exfoliation methods require a compromise between the quality of the final flakes and their lateral size, restricting the effectiveness of the product. In this work, we describe an intercalation-assisted exfoliation route, which allows the production of high-quality graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, and molybdenum disulfide 2D sheets with average aspect ratios 30 times larger than that obtained via conventional liquid-phase exfoliation. The combination of chlorosulfuric acid intercalation with in situ pyrene sulfonate functionalisation produces a suspension of thin large-area flakes, which are stable in various polar solvents. The described method is simple and requires no special laboratory conditions. We demonstrate that these suspensions can be used for fabrication of laminates and coatings with electrical properties suitable for a number of real-life applications.


Metals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1571
Author(s):  
Pavel Grudinsky ◽  
Dmitry Zinoveev ◽  
Denis Pankratov ◽  
Artem Semenov ◽  
Maria Panova ◽  
...  

Red mud is an iron-containing waste of alumina production with high alkalinity. A promising approach for its recycling is solid-phase carbothermic roasting in the presence of special additives followed by magnetic separation. The crucial factor of the separation of the obtained iron metallic particles from gangue is sufficiently large iron grains. This study focuses on the influence of Na2SO4 addition on iron grain growth during carbothermic roasting of two red mud samples with different (CaO + MgO)/(SiO2 + Al2O3) ratio of 0.46 and 1.21, respectively. Iron phase distribution in the red mud and roasted samples were investigated in detail by Mössbauer spectroscopy method. Based on thermodynamic calculations and results of multifactorial experiments, the optimal conditions for the roasting of the red mud samples with (CaO + MgO)/(SiO2 + Al2O3) ratio of 0.46 and 1.21 were duration of 180 min with the addition of 13.65% Na2SO4 at 1150 °C and 1350 °C followed by magnetic separation that led to 97% and 83.91% of iron recovery, as well as 51.6% and 83.7% of iron grade, respectively. The mechanism of sodium sulfate effect on iron grain growth was proposed. The results pointed out that Na2SO4 addition is unfavorable for the red mud carbothermic roasting compared with other alkaline sulfur-free additives.


1994 ◽  
Vol 345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nobuki Ibaraki

AbstractA technical trend for a-Si TFTs is their application to large-size, high-pixel density AMLCDs such as XGA, EWS, and HDTV. In order to realize these LCDs, the TFT device characteristics must be improved. Future technologies, which will be necessary to fabricate TFTs with improved characteristics are as follows,(1) Fully self-aligned TFT technology: A SA-TFT structure reduces the feedthrough voltage caused by parasitic capacitance due to gate/source overlap. This results in an improved picture quality and a higher aperture ratio. Fabrication of such a structure would require ion doping technology.(2) Ion doping technology: This non-mass-separated implantation technique has large area doping capability and much higher doping speed compared to conventional ion implantation technique. The major problems with the ion doping technique is the implantation of unwanted species which deteriorate the quality of source/drain and channel regions of TFTs.


2012 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Li ◽  
Xinguo Zhuang ◽  
Xavier Querol ◽  
Oriol Font ◽  
Natalia Moreno ◽  
...  

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (21) ◽  
pp. 7422
Author(s):  
Min-Kyu Son

Upscaling of photoelectrode for a practical photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting system is still challenging because the PEC performance of large-scale photoelectrode is significantly low, compared to the lab scale photoelectrode. In an effort to overcome this challenge, sputtered gold (Au) and copper (Cu) grid lines were introduced to improve the PEC performance of large-scale cuprous oxide (Cu2O) photocathode in this work. It was demonstrated that Cu grid lines are more effective than Au grid lines to improve the PEC performance of large-scale Cu2O photocathode because its intrinsic conductivity and quality of grid lines are better than ones containing Au grid lines. As a result, the PEC performance of a 25-cm2 scaled Cu2O photocathode with Cu grid lines was almost double than one without grid lines, resulting in an improved charge transport in the large area substrate by Cu grid lines. Finally, a 50-cm2 scaled Cu2O photocathode with Cu grid lines was tested in an outdoor condition under natural sun. This is the first outdoor PEC demonstration of large-scale Cu2O photocathode with Cu grid lines, which gives insight into the development of efficient upscaled PEC photoelectrode.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Panagiotis Angelopoulos ◽  
Maria Georgiou ◽  
Paschalis Oustadakis ◽  
Maria Taxiarchou ◽  
Hakan Karadağ ◽  
...  

Bauxite Metallurgical Residue (BR) is a highly alkaline and very fine-grained by-product of the Bayer process for alumina production. Its huge global annual production has resulted in increasing accumulation of BR, causing deposition problems and serious environmental issues. RM contains oxides and salts of the main elements Fe, Al, Ca, Na, Si, Ti, and rare earths—REEs (Sc, Nd, Y, La, Ce, Ds)—many of which have been categorised by EU as critical metals (CMs). The valorisation of BR as a low-cost secondary raw material and metal resource could be a route for its reduction, introducing the waste into the economic cycle. REEScue constitutes a research project that aims to instigate the efficient exploitation of European bauxite residues, resulting from alumina production from Greece (MYTILINEOS SA), Turkey (ETI Aluminium), and Romania (ALUM SA), containing appreciable concentrations of scandium and REEs, through the development of a number of innovative extraction and separation technologies that can efficiently address the drawbacks of the existing solution. The consortium consists of three alumina producers from Greece (MYTILINEOS SA), Turkey (ETI Aluminium), and Romania (ALUM SA) and two academic partners from Greece (National Technical University of Athens) and Turkey (Necmettin Erbacan University). We present preliminary characterization results of three different BR samples that originate from the three aluminium industries, in respect of bulk chemical analysis (XRF, ICP), mineralogical investigation (XRD), and morphological observation through microscopy.


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