A Probe into The Germanium and Zinc Dissolution Behaviour Through Washing Process of Zinc Plant Residue

recycling the zinc plant residues containing valuable metals such as germanium besides zinc is a vital process economically and enviornmentally. The washing is a primary step in this process, carried out to remove zinc content. In this study an attempt is made to probe the effect of acid concentration, leaching duration time and temperature on dissolution behaviour of zinc and germanium through washing procedure. XRF and atomic absorption spectrometery (AAS) were applied to analyze the chemical composition of zinc residue. Also, inductively coupled plasma spectrophotometery (ICP) was utilized to detect the germanium content. Results show that acid concentartion play an important role in both zinc and germanium dissolution, where increment of acid concentration enhances the zinc recovery, and germanium recovery faces a peak value through escalation of acid concentration. Moreover, the increment of temperature is accompanied by increase in zinc and germanium dissolution efficiency. In addition, it is seen that zinc dissolution can be improved by escalating the leaching duration time , whereas the germanium dissolution is not affected by leaching time duration as well as zinc recovery.