May 21, 2010, Huludao, Liaoning—Key Techniques in Recovery of Vanadium and Chrome from Waste Residue and 15000 t/a Pilot Plant, a project under National 863 Program and by IPE and Huludao Huihong Non-Ferrous Metals Ltd., passed the achievement appraisal. The meeting was organized by Liaoning Provincial S& T Department and CAS Liaoning Branch. The appraisal committee consisted of Professor Guocheng Zhang, CAS member, Professor Dingfan Qiu, CAS member, Vice President Yuansheng Fan of CAEPI, Secretary-General Qing Liu of CRRA, Dr Yubin Li of Environmental Protection Dept.. Liaoning, Professor Yongfeng Nie of Tsinghua, and Dr Yongfeng Jia of CAS IAE.
The committee listened carefully to the research work report, implementation report. After inquires, the committee had site survey of the pilot plant and had in depth understanding and through discussion of each process section. They were very impressed by the zero discharge of waste residue. The committee concluded that there was no mature process in the world for waste residue containing vanadium and chrome yet. The project developed an industrial-scale process and equipment to recover vanadium, chrome and other components in waste residue, high selective separation of vanadium and chrome, no waste water emission. It is very innovative development with independent IPR. Through literature searches, no such technique had ever been published at home and abroad. This is the original process developed in China. The overall process reached the world class, in which, the extraction separation of vanadium and chrome is a world leading process.
After four years’ effort, Dr Hongbin Cao and his team built up 15000t/a vanadium and chrome recovery pilot plant in Huludao Honghui. It is the first vanadium and chrome separation plant in the world. The whole recovery process works at ambient temperature and pressure. 98% of water residues were recovered and no waste water or solid were discharged. Meantime, by making use of heating in cycling kiln and optimization of process power consumption, the new process could save 40% of power consumption, compared with the conventional process.
In one year operation, the pilot plant brought good economic benefits to the company and local economy. Moreover, the zero waste water technique had been applied to the metallurgical process of nickel, molybdenum, vanadium and zirconium. And V/Cr separation process extended its application to utilization of vanadium slag and V-bearing titanomagnetite, made changes to the low usage ratio vanadium and chrome resources and high dependency on export.
