S. Rahmati, A. Ahmadi, M.R. Hosseini, M. Molaei Nasab, Effect of liquid and air flowrates on the efficiency of a two-stage air-assisted solvent extraction system in pilot scale, Minerals Engineering (2020) 153: 106376.

Air-assisted solvent extraction (AASX) in continuous-mode is a new development in the solvent extraction process for the extraction of valuable metals from dilute solutions. The main aim of this research was to investigate the effect of the flowrate of liquid and air phases on Cu recovery and organic phase recycling in a two-stage AASX system at pilot scale. The experiments were carried out in continuous-mode and the effect of the flowrates of liquid (18–30 L/min) and air (5–15 L/min for the first stage and 20–40 L/min for the second stage) were evaluated. Response surface methodology was used for designing the experiments, and results were analyzed by the analysis of variance (ANOVA). It was found that increasing the liquid flowrate reduced the Cu recovery in both stages by decreasing the retention time. While, enhancing the air flowrate in the first column increased the Cu recovery and organic phase …