Ilmenite Chlorination: Usage of Gaseous Carbon Tetrachloride at Relatively Lower Temperatures

Malaysian ilmenite from “amang” or tin mining waste is well known for its physical and chemical complexity, making it difficult to be treated conventionally. With knowledge of ilmenite is rich in titania and iron, extractive efforts were made in order to segregate and recover the components of ilmenite, with major interest being the removal and retrieval of titanium. In this study, the extent of chlorination execution is observed by means of weight loss studies under various parameters, with an aim of successful chlorination at lower temperatures. At 723 K, chlorination trials were done using gaseous hydrogen chloride (gHCl), carbon monoxide-chlorine gas mixtures (gCO-Cl) and gaseous carbon tetrachloride (gCT). It was clearly seen that at such a relatively low temperature, only gCT was able to obtain a good chlorination degree, with up to 90% chlorination of –45+37 μm ilmenite particles were observed after 1 hour of reaction. With similar size fraction and time, hydrogen chloride was only able to give approximately 6% of chlorination while the mixture of carbon monoxide and chlorine was seen incapable of giving anything higher than a 6% reaction. Initial observation suggests that the chlorination of ilmenite by carbon tetrachloride physically resembles the core shrinking model, although proper kinetic studies needs to be done to confirm this. Changes in various parameter values are seen to be quite sensitive to the overall ilmenite chlorination (via gCT) process. This study have shown that gCT presents an interesting route for the chlorination of complex ores such as ilmenite.