Kinetics and leaching behaviors of aluminum from pharmaceutical blisters in sodium hydroxide solution

A hydrometallurgical process was developed for recycling pharmaceutical blisters. Leaching aluminum from pharmaceutical blisters using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solutions was investigated with respect to leaching behaviors and kinetics. A L9 (34) orthogonal design of experiments suggests that the most significant factor is NaOH concentration followed by temperature and leaching time. Factorial experiments demonstrate that the leaching rate of aluminum increases with increasing of the factors. The optimum conditions are temperature of 70 °C, leaching time of 20 min, NaOH concentration of 1.25 mol/L, liquid-to-solid mass ratio of 15:1 and agitation speed of 400 r/min. Under optimum conditions, the leaching rate is up to 100%, implying that aluminum and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic in pharmaceutical blisters are separated completely. Kinetics of leaching aluminum is best described by the product layer diffusion control model, and the activation energy is calculated to be 19.26 kJ/mol.