Leaching Study of a Zinc Concentrate Ore by Factorial Design

Environmental control is becoming more and more stringent. As conventional processes for zinc production are pollutant routes, alternative methods have become an important subject of research. In this regard, the leaching processes have aroused a considerable interest, namely the electrochemically induced approach. The behaviour of zinc concentrate ore in the leaching processesses is influenced by several parameters. Chloride concentration and leaching solution pH, time and temperature of reaction were studied in order to evaluate their influence on the zinc recovery. The efficiency of the leaching process for zinc extraction is performed by factorial design. The experiments were carried out by 23 and 22 factorial designs of the factors. Results show that all factors, except for the time of reaction have a significant influence on the optimisation process, within each experimental region.