Examination of Copper Electrowinning Smoothing Agents. Part I: A Review

Abstract

Organic smoothing additives are used to produce dense, thick, high-quality cathodes in copper electrowinning. Glue had been used traditionally and is still used in operations that do not employ solvent extraction to produce the electrowinning electrolyte. With the advent of solvent extraction-electrowinning, guar started to be used and remained in use for many years as it does not affect the phase disengagement in solvent extraction. Recently, however, guar has been replaced by less-expensive saccharide- and polyacrylamide-based additives. This paper is the first of a series of four papers that examine saccharides and polyacrylamides as new additives for copper electrowinning. A review of previous research related to copper electrowinning additives is presented here, along with a selected review of additives in other copper electrodeposition systems.

Department(s)

Materials Science and Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Chloride; Copper; Cyclic voltammetry; Cyquest N-900; Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy; Electrowinning; HydroStar

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

0747-9182

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2016 Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Feb 2016

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