Adsorption and desorption properties for rhenium using a kind of weak-base anion resin

In this paper, a weak-base resin was adopted to recycle rhenium because of its excellent adsorption and desorption properties for rhenium, while the kinetics and thermodynamics properties of adsorbing rhenium from the rhenium stock solution were systematically investigated. The kinetics investigations confirm that the adsorption process of Re belongs to kinetic control by particle diffusion process and the corresponding reaction rate constant is 2.68 × 10⁻³ s⁻¹. Then, the Langmuir and Freundlich models were used to describe the adsorption equilibrium behaviors of Re and the thermodynamics parameters are obtained. The results show that the Langmuir model is the best-fitted model, and the Gibbs free energy change of Re adsorption onto ZS15 weak-base resin is ∆G⁰ = − 10.59 + 12.66T. To verify the weak-base resins for extracting rhenium in industrial application, the column experiments were operated in the spray solution generating by roasting the molybdenum concentrates. The results indicate that the weak-base resins possess excellent adsorptive selectivity for rhenium, and the ammonia solution with low concentration could sufficiently desorb rhenium from the resins.