The process of treating spent dry barrier from aluminum electrolysis with alkali and acid is proposed. Spent dry barrier sample from an aluminum company was taken as the raw material, and its main phases are NaF, NaAlSiO4, CaF2, α-Al2O3, Na3AlF6, Si and β-Al2O3. Firstly, the NaF with mass fraction of 98.84% is obtained by water leaching separation of the raw materials. Secondly, the optimal process condition for alkali leaching treatment of water leaching residue were obtained by single factor method as follows: temperature of 90 ℃, liquid-solid ratio of 5 cm3/g, alkali-slag mass ratio of 0.25, and reaction time of 100 min, and under this condition, the leaching rate of Na3AlF6 was 94.04%. After that, the optimal process conditions for acid leaching treatment of alkali leaching residue were obtained by single factor method as follows: temperature of 58 ℃, reaction time of 45 min, acid concentration of 0.6 mol/L, and liquid-solid ratio of 12 cm3/g, and under this condition, NaAlSiO4 and CaF2 can be leached. Subsequently, the alkali leaching solution was dropped into the acid leaching solution to remove silicon in the acid leaching solution. It was found that when the pH was about 3, the precipitation effect of silica sol in the acid leaching solution was the best, and the product obtained by heating the silica sol which was obtained through filtering was mainly SiO2·0.2Al2O3, with a mass fraction of 97.20%. The acid leaching solution after filtering to remove the silica sol was added to the alkali leaching solution to precipitate and recover the fluoride salts, and it was found that when the pH was 9, the recovery rates of CaF2 and Na3AlF6 were the highest, which were 95.91% and 92.44%, respectively, and the mass fractions were 48.41% and 25.14%, respectively. In addition, the precipitate contains 25.32% (mass fraction) of Al(OH)3.
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