Recovery of Mo from Ni–Mo ore leach solution with carrier co-precipitation method

Abstract In this paper, “nascent” Fe(OH) 3 as carrier precipitation and NaHCO 3 as buffer agent were used to extract molybdenum from the complex Ni–Mo ore leach solution. The effects of different variables on the molybdenum extraction, such as the dosage of FeCl 3 and NaHCO 3 and the reaction temperature and time, were studied. The results showed that over 99% of molybdenum were extracted in 2 h at 25 ± 1 °C under the conditions of mole ratio of Fe 3+ /Mo 2.2–2.5 and mass ratio of NaHCO 3 /Mo 0.7–1.5. About 92% of Mo in the Fe(OH) 3 precipitation can be leached by NH 3 ⋅H 2 O to prepare the ammonium molybdate solution with about 100 g/L Mo. After treating with NH 3 ⋅H 2 O, the Fe(OH) 3 precipitation was dissolved with HCl to obtain the FeCl 3 solution (FeCl 3 500 g/L) which can be reused for the next round of experiments.