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Tellurium, its resourcefulness and recovery

  • Processing for Minor Elements Recovery
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Abstract

Although it looks similar to tin, tellurium is a metalloid chemical element which is used in a variety of industries, primarily in the form of an additive to an assortment of compounds and alloys. As solar cell technology has improved the cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV modules have become among the lowest-cost producers of solar electricity. Consequently, interest has recently been focused on tellurium recovery. In this paper, tellurium’s availability and its distribution in general metallurgical processing is summarized and analyzed. Because tellurium is the scarcest of all the byproducts and mainly recovered from copper sulfides, hydrometallurgical recovery of tellurium from electrolytic copper anode slimes is described.

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Authors
  1. Shijie Wang
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Additional information

Shijie Wang, senior engineer, is with Rio Tinto Kennecott Utah Copper in Magna UT.

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Wang, S. Tellurium, its resourcefulness and recovery. JOM 63, 90–93 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0146-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-011-0146-7

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