The Solvent Extraction Process

The process of solvent extraction.(or liquid-liquid extraction) is a separation technique involving mass transfer across a phase boundary, and as such is not limited to metal transfer from an aqueous to a non-aqueous phase, or, vice versa. We shall here, however, restrict ourselves to the application of the solvent extraction technique to metallurgical processing. Basically, the process of solvent extraction as applied to metals separation and purification requires only that a specific metal be transferred from, initially, an aqueous phase to a non-aqueous phase, followed by a reversal of this transfer. Such a process can be defined simply by the following equation: [M + E ME]