Oxidative leaching behavior of metalliferous black shale in acidic solution using persulfate as oxidant

Abstract The oxidative dissolution of metalliferous black shale in sulfuric acid solution using sodium persulfate as an oxidant was investigated. The effects of leaching factors including leaching temperature, leaching time, stirring speed, initial concentration of sodium persulfate and sulfuric acid and particle size on the leaching rate were studied as well. The leaching kinetics of molybdenum, nickel and iron from metalliferous black shale shows that the leaching rate is controlled by a chemical reaction through a layer on the unreacted shrinking core. The leaching process follows the kinetics model 1–(1– a ) 1/3 = kt with apparent activation energies of 34.50, 43.14 and 71.79 kJ/mol for Mo, Ni and Fe, respectively. The reaction orders in sodium persulfate are 0.80, 1.01 and 0.75 for molybdenum, nickel and iron, respectively, while in sulfuric acid, these orders are 0.45, 0.75 and 0.50 for molybdenum, nickel and iron, respectively. In addition, the reaction mechanism for the dissolution of the metalliferous black shale was discussed.