Removal of arsenic and antimony from anode slime by vacuum dynamic flash reduction.

Anode slime is an important material of recycling precious metals. Up to now, treating the arsenic- and antimony-rich anode slime by conventional processes has the following problems: its economic and environmental effect is less than satisfactory, and the removal effect of arsenic and antimony from anode slime in present processes is not all that could be desired. Therefore, vacuum dynamic flash reduction, a new process for treating arsenic- and antimony-rich anode slime, was investigated in this work. During vacuum dynamic flash reduction, silver from the arsenic- and antimony-rich anode slime was left behind in the distilland as the silver alloy, and trivalent oxides of arsenic and antimony were evaporated in the distillate. The experimental results showed that the evaporation percent of the arsenic- and antimony-rich anode slime was 65.6%. Namely, 98.92% by weight of arsenic and 93.67% by weight of antimony can be removed under the following experimental conditions: temperature of 1083 K, vacuum evaporation time of 60 min, and air flow rate of 400 mL/min corresponding to the residual gas pressure of 250 Pa. Moreover, vacuum treatment eliminates much of the air pollution and material losses associated with other conventional treatment methods.