An environmentally-friendly vacuum reduction metallurgical process to recover germanium from coal fly ash

The demand for germanium in the field of semiconductor, electronics, and optical devices is growing rapidly; however, the resources of germanium are scarce worldwide. As a secondary material, coal fly ash could be further recycled to retrieve germanium. Up to now, the conventional processes to recover germanium have two problems as follows: on the one hand, it is difficult to be satisfactory for its economic and environmental effect; on the other hand, the recovery ratio of germanium is not all that could be desired. In this paper, an environmentally-friendly vacuum reduction metallurgical process (VRMP) was proposed to recover germanium from coal fly ash. The results of the laboratory scale experiments indicated that the appropriate parameters were 1173K and 10Pa with 10wt% coke addition for 40min, and recovery ratio germanium was 93.96%. On the basis of above condition, the pilot scale experiments were utilized to assess the actual effect of VRMP for recovery of germanium with parameter of 1473K, 1-10Pa and heating time 40min, the recovery ratio of germanium reached 94.64%. This process considerably enhances germanium recovery, meanwhile, eliminates much of the water usage and residue secondary pollution compared with other conventional processes.