Recovery of zinc and manganese from spent Zn-Mn batteries using solvent extraction

For several decades, zinc-manganese batteries have been created to serve many forms of electronic products. However, every creative act has its destructive consequence. Plenty of waste element inside has caused the irreversible contamination to our environment. This study will focus on dealing with zinc-manganese batteries using environmental technology and hydrometallurgy methods, such as physical pretreatment, acid leaching and solvent extraction. The goal of this research will concentrate on the recovery of zinc and manganese from zinc-manganese batteries. The pretreatment processes include crushing, sieving and magnetic separation to separate the waste plastic, scraps of paper and impurity from waste zinc-manganese batteries. Before the process of the solvent extraction zinc-manganese batteries will be leached by specific acid first. In next step, the solvent extraction will be carried out and investigated. The parameters such as extractant concentration, extraction time, equilibrium pH value and organic-aqueous ratio (O/A) are analyzed in detail. Finally, the products of Zn and Mn are obtained in high-purity level and the recovery rates are about 92% for Zn and 95% for Mn.