New Process Research on Aluminium Production from Non-Traditional Aluminum Resource by Microwave Chlorination

A novel method was developed to prepare aluminium via fluidizing chlorination with untraditional aluminum resources as raw materials. The main steps in this method were: alumina transformed into aluminium chloride through fluidizing chlorination; aluminium chloride reacted with NaOH solution for aluminium hydroxide and NaCl; NaOH and Cl₂ were recycled from NaCl solution by electrolytic process. The new process for preparing aluminium resources by fluidizing chlorination method was proposed to realize efficient separation of the valuable components in non-traditional aluminum resources such as fly ash or low grade bauxite, silicon in untraditional aluminum changed into SiCl₄ in fluidizing chlorination which could be used as raw materials for high purity Si products. Furthermore, the tailings emission of this process was quite lower than that of Bayer process. This paper mainly introduce the principle of this new process, the thermodynamics of fluidizing chlorination is analysis as well.