NH3-CO2-H2O SYSTEM AT ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE IN NONFERROUS EXTRACTIVE METALLURGY.

Current emphasis on compatibility of metals-producing systems with the need to meet environmental protection criteria provides special encouragement to researchers and engineers to find acceptable ways of recovering metals. Examination of the general approach to this paper will reveal much that is firm and positive with respect to empirical results--extractions, recoveries, amenability to familiar proven equipment and materials of construction common to the industry. The purpose of this review, then, is to stimulate the awareness of chemists, metallurgists and engineers to provide the unusually versatile ″ammonia leaching″ process its greatest opportunity to serve the nonferrous metals industry.