Hydrometallurgical extraction ofzinc from wastes:  optimization,feasibility and practical sustainableapproach

Hafida  Boutefnouchet; Ranim Bouzina; Bornia Benouis; Djamel Turki; Messaoud Saidani; Safia Alleg; Said Mechachti

doi:10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4

Hydrometallurgical extraction ofzinc from wastes: optimization,feasibility and practical sustainableapproach

Hafida Boutefnouchet, Ranim Bouzina, Bornia Benouis, Djamel Turki, Messaoud Saidani, Safia Alleg, Said Mechachti

Senior Research Management Group

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This research proposes a practical method for extracting zinc from leaching residues atALZINC Ghazaouet -Tlemcen (Algeria), which can improve the yield of waste recovery during the wet treatment of zinc ore.The quality of the blende and calcine (grilled) in terms of elemental chemical composition was identified using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and residues containing 20.02 wt% Zn and 20.24 wt% Fe were determined by volumetric analysis.The experimental protocol was established in two successive stages in order to optimise the operating conditions of the ammonium salt-based jarosite process.The best process yield with 17.02% zinc recovery from residues was obtained under operating conditions of pH 1.5 (190 g/L H2SO4), a temperature of 90 °C, 800 mg of (NH4) 2SO4 and a reaction time of 300 min.The microstructure and elemental distribution of the materials studied were examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and mapping.A qualitative analysis of the samples was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). This analysis, combined with Rietveld refinement, confirmed the effectiveness of the treatment thanks to the quality of the obtained product (Zinc), with a purity of 99.995% and an estimated average grain size of 11 μm.

Original language	English
Article number	36907 (2025)
Number of pages	18
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	15
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4
Publication status	Published - 22 Oct 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Keywords

zinc
leaching
Tailings
Wet process
Rietveld refinement

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Saidani2025VoRFinal published version, 6.07 MBLicence: CC BY
Hydrometallurgical extraction of zinc Boutefnouchet_et_al-2025-Scientific_ReportsFinal published version, 6.24 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

@article{76e23ac6bd6e4ef88364f1a0e574e874,

title = "Hydrometallurgical extraction ofzinc from wastes: optimization,feasibility and practical sustainableapproach",

abstract = "This research proposes a practical method for extracting zinc from leaching residues atALZINC Ghazaouet -Tlemcen (Algeria), which can improve the yield of waste recovery during the wet treatment of zinc ore.The quality of the blende and calcine (grilled) in terms of elemental chemical composition was identified using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and residues containing 20.02 wt\% Zn and 20.24 wt\% Fe were determined by volumetric analysis.The experimental protocol was established in two successive stages in order to optimise the operating conditions of the ammonium salt-based jarosite process.The best process yield with 17.02\% zinc recovery from residues was obtained under operating conditions of pH 1.5 (190 g/L H2SO4), a temperature of 90 °C, 800 mg of (NH4) 2SO4 and a reaction time of 300 min.The microstructure and elemental distribution of the materials studied were examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and mapping.A qualitative analysis of the samples was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). This analysis, combined with Rietveld refinement, confirmed the effectiveness of the treatment thanks to the quality of the obtained product (Zinc), with a purity of 99.995\% and an estimated average grain size of 11 μm.",

keywords = "zinc, leaching, Tailings, Wet process, Rietveld refinement",

author = "Hafida Boutefnouchet and Ranim Bouzina and Bornia Benouis and Djamel Turki and Messaoud Saidani and Safia Alleg and Said Mechachti",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.",

year = "2025",

month = oct,

day = "22",

doi = "10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4",

language = "English",

volume = "15",

journal = "Scientific Reports",

issn = "2045-2322",

publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Hydrometallurgical extraction ofzinc from wastes

T2 - optimization,feasibility and practical sustainableapproach

AU - Boutefnouchet, Hafida

AU - Bouzina, Ranim

AU - Benouis, Bornia

AU - Turki, Djamel

AU - Saidani, Messaoud

AU - Alleg, Safia

AU - Mechachti, Said

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

PY - 2025/10/22

Y1 - 2025/10/22

N2 - This research proposes a practical method for extracting zinc from leaching residues atALZINC Ghazaouet -Tlemcen (Algeria), which can improve the yield of waste recovery during the wet treatment of zinc ore.The quality of the blende and calcine (grilled) in terms of elemental chemical composition was identified using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and residues containing 20.02 wt% Zn and 20.24 wt% Fe were determined by volumetric analysis.The experimental protocol was established in two successive stages in order to optimise the operating conditions of the ammonium salt-based jarosite process.The best process yield with 17.02% zinc recovery from residues was obtained under operating conditions of pH 1.5 (190 g/L H2SO4), a temperature of 90 °C, 800 mg of (NH4) 2SO4 and a reaction time of 300 min.The microstructure and elemental distribution of the materials studied were examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and mapping.A qualitative analysis of the samples was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). This analysis, combined with Rietveld refinement, confirmed the effectiveness of the treatment thanks to the quality of the obtained product (Zinc), with a purity of 99.995% and an estimated average grain size of 11 μm.

AB - This research proposes a practical method for extracting zinc from leaching residues atALZINC Ghazaouet -Tlemcen (Algeria), which can improve the yield of waste recovery during the wet treatment of zinc ore.The quality of the blende and calcine (grilled) in terms of elemental chemical composition was identified using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and residues containing 20.02 wt% Zn and 20.24 wt% Fe were determined by volumetric analysis.The experimental protocol was established in two successive stages in order to optimise the operating conditions of the ammonium salt-based jarosite process.The best process yield with 17.02% zinc recovery from residues was obtained under operating conditions of pH 1.5 (190 g/L H2SO4), a temperature of 90 °C, 800 mg of (NH4) 2SO4 and a reaction time of 300 min.The microstructure and elemental distribution of the materials studied were examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and mapping.A qualitative analysis of the samples was performed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). This analysis, combined with Rietveld refinement, confirmed the effectiveness of the treatment thanks to the quality of the obtained product (Zinc), with a purity of 99.995% and an estimated average grain size of 11 μm.

KW - zinc

KW - leaching

KW - Tailings

KW - Wet process

KW - Rietveld refinement

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105019559104

U2 - 10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4

DO - 10.1038/s41598-025-20855-4

M3 - Article

SN - 2045-2322

VL - 15

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

M1 - 36907 (2025)

ER -