Leaching and Recovery of Vanadium from Carbon Soot

Carbon soot, a solid waste produced in the petrochemical industry, typically contains heavy metals that originate from crude oil. Due to the presence of these hazardous heavy metals, the unsafe disposal of carbon soot may lead to pollution that affects the environment and human health. Therefore, it is required that the carbon soot be treated before disposal to minimize any negative impacts. In this study, carbon soot containing high level of Ni and V may potentially be recovered as a valuable resource. The carbon soot could also be used as adsorbents or further upgraded to activated carbon after removal of heavy metals.

In this work, the metal of interest is V as the carbon soot contains >10,000 ppm of V. Since V is highly valuable in the market especially in the alloy industry, there is a motivation for its recovery. The leaching of V by chemical and microbial means at different conditions is being investigated. Following the leaching step, the recovery of V into solid form using selective precipitation by step-wise pH modification of the leachate is also being examined.