Zeitschrift für Pulvermetallurgie und Bergbau

Abstrakt

Statistical Evaluation of Ammonium Hydrofluoride Process for Beryllium Extraction from Indian Beryl Ore

B.M. Tripathi, Jyoti Prakash, D.D. Thorat and D. Sathiyamoorthy

Extraction of beryllium from Indian beryl ore using ammonium hydrofluoride as fluorinating agent was studied and optimized. This is process seems to be potentially promising for Indian beryl ore for extraction of beryllium. Four control factors, including first stage reaction temperature (T1), first stage reaction time (t1), second stage reaction temperature (T2) and second stage reaction time (t2), each in three levels have been anlysed using Taguchi technique. L9 orthogonal array and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to determine the optimum conditions and the most significant factors affecting the overall beryllium recovery in the extraction process. The optimum extraction conditions to maximize beryllium recovery were T1=1500C, t1=60 min, T2=4000C and t2=60 min. In the verification extraction experiment, beryllium recovery was 97.7%. It was also found that first stage reaction temperature has the highest effect on beryllium recovery (75.15%). The other factors namely first stage reaction time, second stage reaction temperature and second stage reaction time could yield respectively 7.75%, 2.98% and 14.11% beryllium. The results were in close agreement with the prediction by the statistical model.