Recovery of rhenium from molybdenite calcine by a resin-in-pulp process

This paper introduces a resin-in-pulp.(RIP) hydrometallurgical process, which is widely used in gold leaching and recovery industry, to recover rhenium effectively and economically from molybdenite calcine by leaching, absorbing and eluting operations. With fresh water leaching and strong basic anion resin absorbing simultaneously, followed by NH4OH and HNO3 eluting Mo and Re respectively, more than 90% of rhenium was recovered. Factors influence leaching such as leaching time, ratio (wt/wt) of solid to liquid in the pulp, ratio (v/v) of resin to the pulp as well as parameters affecting the absorbing and eluting processes are discussed. The new RIP rhenium recovery process obtained is of the advantages of higher selectivity, short process, less costs and environmental compact, which is beneficial to the molybdenum and rhenium industries to comprehensive utilize their less common metals resource. (C) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.