Recovery of vanadium from vanadium slag with high phosphorus content via recyclable microemulsion extraction

Because of the interference from phosphorus, it is practically challenging to efficiently recover vanadium from vanadium slag with high phosphorus contents (VS-HPC). We propose to separate vanadium and phosphorus in aqueous medium via microemulsion extraction, which enables the recovery of vanadium from the leach solution obtained by conventional calcification roasting and acid leaching process of VS-HPC. The influences of various factors on the separation of vanadium and phosphorus have been investigated. Under the most suitable conditions, the extraction efficiency of vanadium can reach as high as 99.9% while that of phosphorus has been impressively lowered to 5.5%. After establishing the microemulsion-based separation method of vanadium and phosphorus, the vanadium element in VS-HPC was extracted to leach solution. The extraction and recovery of vanadium and phosphorus has further enabled, the production of V2O5 with a high purity of 99.7%; the high purity has made the products much more economically appealing than the commonly manufactured V2O5 with a purity of 98.0%. This work has provided new pathways of promoting sustainability in the non-ferrous metal resource utilization.