In this thesis, it is aimed to design lithium extraction from boron clays
using statistical design of experiments and robust design methodologies. There
are several factors affecting extraction of lithium from clays. The most important
of these factors have been limited to a number of six which have been gypsum to
clay ratio, roasting temperature, roasting time, leaching solid to liquid ratio,
leaching time and limestone to clay ratio. For every factor, three levels have
been chosen and an experiment has been designed. After performing three
replications for each of the experimental run, signal to noise ratio
transformation, ANOVA, regression analysis and response surface methodology
have been applied on the results of the experiments. Optimization and
confirmation experiments have been made sequentially to find factor settings
that maximize lithium extraction with minimal variation. The mean of the
maximum extraction has been observed as 83.81% with a standard deviation
of 4.89 and the 95% prediction interval for the mean extraction is (73.729,
94.730). This result is in agreement with the studies that have been made in
the literature. However / this study is unique in the sense that lithium is extracted
from boron clays by using limestone directly from the nature, and gypsum as a
waste product of boric acid production. Since these two materials add about 20%
cost to the extraction process, the results of this study become important.
Moreover, in this study it has been shown that statistical design of experiments
help mining industry to reduce the need for standardization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/1027036/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 January 2003 |
| Creators | Buyukburc, Atil |
| Contributors | Koksal, Gulser |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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