Modeling of phosphoric acid purification by liquid-liquid extraction

Phosphoric acid is an important industrial chemical. It is mainly produced by the wet process which consists of an attack of the phosphate rock by sulphuric acid leading to a complex solution containing a large number of impurities such as metal ions like Fe3+, Al3+, Mg2+, Cd2+ etc., which can effectively be recovered by solvent extraction process. In this present work a model of the liquid-liquid extraction process is presented. It is mainly based on thermodynamics, where two different routes have been tested for the modeling of the complexation process. The method has been tested using a model system with Al3+ as the contaminant, dodecyl naphthalene sulphonic acid (HDDNSA) as the complexing agent and kerosene as the diluent. The study has also investigated the influence of various parameters such as the pH of the aqueous phase and the initial concentration of the phosphoric acid.