Hydrometallurgy 161 (2016) 107111

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Hydrometallurgy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hydromet

Technical Note

Leaching of low grade zinc oxide ores in nitrilotriacetic acid solutions

Tianzu Yang, Shuai Rao, Duchao Zhang , Jianfeng Wen, Weifeng Liu, Lin Chen, Xinwang Zhang
School of Metallurgy and Environment, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 11 August 2015
Received in revised form 21 January 2016
Accepted 21 January 2016
Available online 22 January 2016
Keywords:
Zinc oxide ores
Nitrilotriacetic acid
Leaching ratio
Zinc complexes

a b s t r a c t
A new method for the selective extraction of zinc from low grade zinc oxide ore in nitrilotriacetic acid solutions
was proposed. A thermodynamic study indicated that the leaching process could be made efcient and selective
by controlling the pH of the leaching solution. When low grade zinc oxide ore samples were leached in a 0.25 M
nitrilotriacetic acid solution at 40 C for 2 h with a liquidsolid ratio of 10 mL/g, the leaching ratios of zinc and iron
were 91.0% and 4.1%, respectively. Additionally, the nitrilotriacetic acid was regenerated by adjusting the pH of
the leaching solution after the leaching process.
2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction
Currently, the main source of zinc metal is zinc sulphide ore. However, as zinc consumption increases and zinc sulphide ore grades decrease, the supply gap has been a major problem for the zinc industry
(Abkhoshk et al., 2014; Ejtemaei et al., 2014). Therefore, the development of new technologies to produce zinc from zinc oxide ore has become an important research eld in recent years.
Zinc is mainly extracted from zinc oxide deposits using hydrometallurgical methods. Basically, this process contains three steps, leaching,
purication and electrolysis (Safari et al., 2009). During the leaching
process, the most common leaching agent is sulfuric acid. However,
for low grade zinc oxide ore, especially those with high contents of
iron, calcium and silicon, excessive acid consumption and complex purication process have caused signicant concerns (Xu et al., 2010,
2012).
The alkaline leaching process has attracted a great deal of attention
due to its higher selectivity. Recently, extensive studies have been conducted on the treatment of zinc oxide ore by alkaline agents such as sodium hydroxide (Chen et al., 2009; Santos et al., 2010) and ammoniacal
solutions (Ding et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2012a, 2012b; Yin et al., 2010).
During the leaching process, OH and NH3 serve as ligands by coordinating with Zn2 + to form soluble Zn(OH)2i i (i = 1 4) and
(i = 1 4) complexes, respectively. However, a relatively
Zn(NH3)2+
i
high leaching ratio can only be achieved under certain specic conditions, such as a large liquidsolid ratio or a high leaching agent concentration. This can be attributed to the low stability of zinc complexes that
cannot completely dissolve insoluble zinc minerals (Yang et al., 2010).
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zdc015@sina.com.cn (D. Zhang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hydromet.2016.01.024
0304-386X/ 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Therefore, it is imperative to identify new ligands (or leaching agents)

for the treatment of low grade zinc oxide ore.
In this paper, a new ligand, nitrilotriacetic acid (H3NTA), is proposed
as a leaching agent for treating low grade zinc oxide ore. Nitrilotriacetic
acid is well known as a metal chelate agent that has been successfully
employed in the electrogalvanizing industry. With nitrilotriacetic acid
as a leaching agent, NTA3 can coordinate with Zn2+ to form soluble
Zn(NTA)2i 3i (i = 1 2) complexes. The formation constant of these
zinc complexes is relatively high due to the effect of the chelate ring
conguration. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a
novel hydrometallurgical process for the extraction of Zn from low
grade zinc oxide ore that uses nitrilotriacetic acid as the leaching agent.

2. Experimental
2.1. Materials and analysis
The low grade zinc oxide ore investigated in the present study was
from Lanping town in the Yunnan province of China. Prior to the
leaching experiments, all of the samples were washed, dried, ground
and sieved until their particle sizes were below 74 m. The phases of
the low grade zinc oxide ore samples were detected using X-ray diffraction analysis (Rigaku TTR-III) on a 2 scale with Cu K radiation ( =
1.5406 , 50 kV and 100 mA) at a scanning rate of 10/min from 10
to 80. The XRD pattern is shown in Fig. 1; it indicates that
hemimorphite (Zn4Si2O7(OH)2H2O) and cerussite (PbCO3) comprised
the main mineral phase, and quartz (SiO2) and calcite (CaCO3) were
identied as the main gangue components. The elemental composition
of the samples was characterized using X-ray uorescence (XRF, Rigaku
ZSX Primus II), and the results are listed in Table 1. They show that the

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T. Yang et al. / Hydrometallurgy 161 (2016) 107111

Fig. 2. The distribution of zinc species in the Zn2+NTA3 H2O system as the pH varies.

Fig. 1. The XRD pattern of the low grade zinc oxide ore samples.

main components of the low grade zinc oxide ore samples were
Zn10.82%, Fe7.38%, Pb7.80%, Ca21.31% and Si13.53%.
The zinc and iron contents of the leaching residues were determined
using potassium dichromate titration and EDTA titration, respectively
(Vogel, 2000). Their leaching ratios were calculated using the following
equation:
Me

m1  wt 1 m2  wt 2
 100%;
m1  wt 1

where Me is the leaching ratio of a metal, m1 and m2 are the mass of the
low grade zinc oxide ore and the leaching residue, respectively, and wt1
and wt2 are the metal contents of the low grade zinc oxide ore and the
leaching residue, respectively.
2.2. Leaching experiments
The leaching experiments were conducted in a 250 mL three-neck
ask immersed in a thermostatically controlled water bath and
equipped with a mechanical stirrer, a thermometer and a reux condenser. A total of 100 mL of the leaching solution was prepared using
reagent-grade nitrilotriacetic acid and deionized water. The desired
amount of ore was added to the leaching solution when the temperature reached the pre-set value. After the completion of the leaching experiment, the hot slurry was ltered, and the solid residue was dried at
363 K until a constant weight was obtained. The phases and elemental
composition of the leaching residue were detected by XRD and XRF, respectively. The pH of the leaching solution was measured using a
Mettler MT320-S pH metre with a LE438 electrode.

the equilibrium reactions that occur in an aqueous leaching system

and determines the predominant species in the solution under specic
conditions.
Fig. 2 shows diagrams of the distribution of zinc species in the Zn2+
NTA3 H2O system. It demonstrates that free Zn2+ accounts for most of
the total zinc concentration when the pH is less than 1.0, and the
Zn(NTA) complex becomes the predominant species when the pH is
between 3.0 and 8.0. It is worth noting that zinc oxide is present when
the pH is greater than 9.0. This indicates that zinc ions in solution can
be stabilized by NTA3 but can also precipitate as oxides. During the
leaching process, the formation of the soluble ZnNTA complex improves zinc extraction. Therefore, the pH of the leaching solution should
be kept below 9.0.
Fig. 3 illustrates the distribution of the iron species in the Fe3+
NTA3 H2O system. Obviously, the FeNTA complex is predominant
when the pH is less than 2.0, and iron oxide predominates when the
pH is greater than 6.0. Because the dissolution of iron during this
leaching process is undesirable, the pH of the leaching solution should
be kept above 6.0.
Based on this analysis, a leaching solution with a pH between 6.0 and
9.0 should be selected to ensure a selective and efcient leaching
process.
3.2. Effects of the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration and the
reaction temperature
The effect of the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration on zinc and iron
extraction was studied. In these experiments, the leaching temperature

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Thermodynamic study of the Zn2+NTA3 H2O and
Fe3+NTA3 H2O systems
To elucidate the predominant species in the leaching system, species
distribution diagrams were constructed using Medusa (Puente-Siller
et al., 2013). This software is based on an algorithm developed by
Eriksson (Eriksson, G., 1979) that minimizes the Gibbs free energy of
Table 1
The elemental composition of the low grade zinc oxide ore samples.
Component
Wt.%

Ca

Si

Zn

Pb

Fe

Al

Cu

34.24

21.31

13.53

10.82

7.80

7.38

1.66

0.39

0.03

Fig. 3. The distribution of iron species in the Fe3+NTA3 H2O system as the pH varies.

T. Yang et al. / Hydrometallurgy 161 (2016) 107111

109

Table 2
The elemental composition of the zinc leaching residue.
Component
Wt.%

Fig. 4. The effect of the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration on zinc and iron extraction and
the pH of the leaching solution.

(40 C), the liquidsolid ratio (10 mL/g) and the leaching time (2 h)
were kept constant, as shown in Fig. 4. The results indicate that the
nitrilotriacetic acid concentration has a noticeable effect on zinc extraction. When the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration is between 0.1 M and
0.3 M, the amount of zinc extracted improves signicantly from 48.3% to
93.2%. However, it should be noted that when the nitrilotriacetic acid
concentration is greater than 0.25 M, the zinc extraction improves
only slightly, whereas the iron extraction improves signicantly. This
is largely attributable to the difference in the pH of the leaching solutions. The thermodynamic analysis shows that iron complexes are present when the pH is less than 6.0. When the nitrilotriacetic acid
concentration varies from 0.25 M to 0.3 M, the pH of the leaching solution decreases from 6.61 to 5.50. Therefore, the dissolution of iron increases substantially when the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration
increases from 0.25 M to 0.3 M.
At a nitrilotriacetic concentration of 0.25 M and a liquidsolid ratio
of 10 mL/g, the low grade zinc oxide ore samples were leached for 2 h
at different temperatures. Data on the zinc and iron extraction and the
pH of the leaching solutions are shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that
zinc and iron extraction are nearly independent of the reaction temperature. The result presents a completely different variation tendency
than that obtained for sulfuric acid solutions (Souza et al., 2009; Xu
et al., 2010, 2012), in which the elevated temperature increases both

Fig. 5. The effect of the reaction temperature on zinc and iron extraction and the pH of the
leaching solution.

Ca

Si

Zn

Pb

Fe

Al

Cu

41.42

16.38

17.70

1.59

4.71

11.66

1.84

0.55

0.03

the reaction rate and the amount of zinc extracted. This is the result of
the different leaching mechanisms. During the leaching of zinc oxide
ore in a nitrilotriacetic acid solution, the zinc extraction process can be
better explained by substituent group effects from the Lewis acid/base
theory (Steer and Grifths, 2013). Therefore, the coordinating capability
of a ligand with respect to metal ions is a crucial factor in zinc extraction,
whereas the temperature has a negligible effect on the leaching process.
The leaching residue, which was obtained from a 0.25 M
nitrilotriacetic acid solution with a liquidsolid ratio of 10 mL/g at a
leaching temperature of 40 C after 2 h, was chemically analysed using
XRF. The results given in Table 2 show that the leaching residue predominately consisted of calcium, silicon and iron. The leaching process
signicantly reduced the zinc content. The phases of the leaching
residue were detected using XRD. The results given in Fig. 6 show that
the main phases of the leaching residue were calcite and silica. All of
the characteristic peaks of hemimorphite are absent, which suggests
that the hemimorphite was almost entirely leached.
3.3. Regeneration of the leaching agent
The thermodynamic analysis suggests that the ZnNTA complex
is predominant in the leaching solution. Because the ZnNTA complex
is very stable in the leaching solution, it is inefcient to produce
zinc directly by means of conventional solvent extraction and an electrowinning process. Moreover, the leaching agent used is an unconventional reagent with a competitive price. Therefore, it is necessary to
recycle nitrilotriacetic acid before following the conventional technological route. It has been conrmed that free Zn2 + accounts for most
of the total zinc concentration when the pH is less than 1.0. Additionally,
nitrilotriacetic acid can precipitate due to its low solubility in acidic solutions. Therefore, the leaching agent can be regenerated by adjusting
the pH to 1.0.
In this study, the pH of the leaching solution was adjusted to 1.0 by
adding an appropriate amount of sulfuric acid. The white precipitate obtained from the leaching solution was analysed using XRD and the

Fig. 6. The XRD pattern of the zinc leaching residue.

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T. Yang et al. / Hydrometallurgy 161 (2016) 107111

A simplied owchart of the hydrometallurgical processing technique

used with low grade zinc oxide ore in this study, which is based on the
above-mentioned economic and technical considerations, is presented
in Fig. 8. The leaching solution is transformed into a zinc sulphate solution
by adjusting its pH; the resulting solution can be used to produce zinc directly using the conventional electrowinning process. The recycled
nitrilotriacetic acid is returned for the next leaching process. This provides
an alternative method of extracting of zinc from low grade zinc oxide ore.
4. Conclusions
On the basis of the results obtained from the process of leaching zinc
in a nitrilotriacetic acid solution, the following can be concluded:

Fig. 7. The XRD pattern of the white precipitate obtained from the leaching solution when
the pH is 1.0.

results were shown in Fig. 7. The main phases were anglesite (PbSO4),
anhydrite (CaSO4) and nitrilotriacetic acid (H3NTA). Then, the
nitrilotriacetic acid was further puried in an ammoniacal solution.

1. The thermodynamic study shows that an effective and selective

leaching process can be achieved by keeping the pH of the leaching
solutions between 6.0 and 9.0.
2. The results of the leaching experiments indicate that zinc and iron
extraction is signicantly affected by the nitrilotriacetic acid concentration, but is nearly independent of the reaction temperature. When
low grade zinc oxide ore samples were leached in 0.25 M
nitrilotriacetic acid solutions at 40 C for 2 h at a liquidsolid ratio
of 10 mL/g, the leaching ratios of zinc and iron were 91.0% and
4.1%, respectively.
3. The leaching agent can be regenerated by adjusting the pH of the
leaching solution to 1.0.

Fig. 8. A simplied owchart of the proposed method for the hydrometallurgical processing of low grade zinc oxide ore.

T. Yang et al. / Hydrometallurgy 161 (2016) 107111

Acknowledgement
This study was nancially supported by the National Basic Research
Programme of China (No. 2014CB643404), the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 51504292) and the 2011 Joint Innovation
Center clean and effective utilization of strategic mineral resources.
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