Recovery of Magnesium from Ferronickel Slag to Prepare Magnesium Oxide by Sulfuric Acid Leaching

This paper provides a technical approach for efficiently recovering Mg from ferronickel slag to produce high-quality magnesium oxide (MgO) by using the sulfuric acid leaching method under atmospheric pressure. The leaching rate of magnesium is 84.97% after a typical one-step acid leaching process, which is because Mg in FNS mainly exists in the forsterite (Mg2SiO4) phase, which is chemically stable. In order to increase the leaching rate, a two-step acid leaching process was proposed in this work, and the overall leaching rate reached up to 95.82% under optimized conditions. The response surface methodology analysis for parameter optimization and Mg leaching rules revealed that temperature was the most critical factor affecting the Mg leaching rate when the sulfuric acid concentration was higher than 2 mol/L, followed by acid leaching time. Furthermore, interactive behavior also existed between the leaching temperature and leaching time. The leaching kinetics of magnesium from FNS followed a shrinkage-nuclear-reaction model with composite control, which were chemically controlled at lower temperatures and diffusion controlled at higher temperatures; the corresponding apparent activation energy was 19.57 kJ/mol. The leachate can be used to obtain spherical-like alkali magnesium carbonate particles with diameters of 5–10 μm at 97.62% purity. By using a further calcination process, the basic magnesium carbonate can be converted into a light magnesium oxide powder with a particle size of 2–5 μm (MgO content 94.85%), which can fulfill first-level quality standards for industrial magnesium oxide in China.