Hydrometallurgical extraction of zinc from CaO treated EAF dust in ammonium chloride solution

Zinc in Electric Arc Furnace dust or EAF dust mainly exists as ZnFe2O4 and ZnO. While ZnO can be simply dissolved into either an acidic or alkaline solution, it is difficult to dissolve ZnFe2O4. In our previous work, we introduced a process called "CaO treatment", a preliminary pyrometallurgical process designed to transform the ZnFe2O4 in the EAF dust into ZnO and Ca2Fe2O5. The halogens and others heavy metals were favorably vaporized during CaO treatment with no essential evaporation loss of zinc and iron, leaving CaO treated dust which consisted mainly of ZnO and Ca2Fe2O5 and no problematic ZnFe2O4 compound. In this work, the selective leaching of zinc over iron and calcium in the CaO treated dust was investigated using an NH4Cl solution. The effects of temperature, reaction time and NH4Cl concentration on dissolution behavior were examined. While most of the zinc in the CaO treated dust was extracted after 2 h at 70 °C with 2 M NH4Cl, only about 20% of calcium was leached in NH4Cl solution. However, the iron did not dissolve and remained as Ca2Fe2O5 in residue. It was confirmed that zinc can be effectively recovered using NH4Cl solution.