May 28, 2006

Bubbly extractions

Posted in Chemistry, spectroscopy at 12:00 am by David Bradley -- Click to comment

Air-assisted solvent extraction (AASX) process is an important new technique for the extraction of valuable metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and uranium, as well as wastewater treatment where metal concentrations are typically low.

Now, a Canadian research team has discovered that it is the bubbles that play a critical role in providing a high solvent-specific surface area and ease of phase separation. Now, the team has used layer interferometry (in the UV-vis region) to measure the time-dependent thickness of a film formed by blowing an air bubble in kerosene-based solvents. They used Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy to determine its chemical composition.

Read more in my news article on the IR channel on spectroscopyNOW.com

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