Purification of Metals with Ion-Exchnage & Molecular Recognition Technology (MRIX)
Ion-exchange technology has been widely employed in metal recovery industry, in part due to its low energy consumption, simple process apparatus and the regenerability of the ion-exchange polymer resins. However, despite these advantages, the utilisation of ion-exchange resins to purify metals also suffers from a number of problems that limit their metal extraction capability. Therefore, APM has developed our own technology of MRIX adpoted Molecular Recogition in Ion-Exchange process
Recently, APM emerges molecular recognition technology in Ion-Exchange as a promising alternative metal recovery and purification. By chemically immobilising tailor-made ligands onto solid supports (e.g. silica gel, polymer resin) and loaded them into a column, highly selective complexation with target metal cations could be achieved the superior metal selectivity compared to Ion-Exchange alone. The chelated target metal cations from the ligands, facilitating the regeneration of the ligand-bound columns and speeding up the entire recovery process. We have applied this technology in the efficient cobalt/nickel extraction process for industrial usage.