JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE OF GAZI UNIVERSITY, vol.34, no.3, pp.1410-1416, 2019 (SCI-Expanded)
Celestite ore (SrSO4) does not show any solubility in any acid specifically. For this reason, it is difficult to process and treat celestite concentrates in one step only by using acidic medium. However, leaching can be carried out based on the dissolution of SrSO4 and the precipitation of BaSO4 in the solution medium by performing BaCl2 addition to the leaching environment. In this study, leaching properties of native selestite ore in HCl-NaCl-BaCl2 environment were investigated. During leaching process, effects of time, solid/liquid ratio, temperature, concentration of HCl and NaCl on leaching efficiency were investigated. As a result of the experiments, it was observed that each parameter has significant effects on the leaching process, the most important factors on the leaching mechanism being the solid/liquid ratio and grain size. The highest leaching efficiency achieved was 91.2%, by using 1/300 solid/liquid ratio at 65 degrees C for a solution containing 0.5M HCl and 1M NaCl. Upon completion of the dissolution process, the solution obtained was treated with Na2CO3 solution at different temperatures to investigate SrCO3 precipitation processes.