China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Refractory metals are more and more widely used in high-precision fields, but their reserves are low and mostly exist in polymetallic associated minerals, making it difficult to extract. At present, most of the processes for preparing metals and alloys by molten salt electrolysis are based on metal oxides or chlorides as raw materials. Oxide has low solubility in molten salt and poor reduction kinetics; although chloride has good solubility, its preparation process is complicated, corrosive, and pollute the environment. Based on the analysis of the electrochemical behavior of vanadate, chromate and titanate, this paper proposes a new process for preparing metals by using refractory metal oxoates as raw materials in molten salt electrolysis. This process has the advantages of short process flow, no harmful gas generation, high current efficiency, avoiding subsequent impurity removal, etc., and conforms to the principle of efficient metal preparation in a short process.