Mechanism of Tungsten Recovery from Spent Cemented Carbide by Molten Salt Electrodeposition

Abstract

The accumulation of spent carbide (YG8), not only pollutes the environment but also causes waste of tungsten, cobalt and other rare metal resources. To better address this issue, we proposed a combined electrochemical separation process of low-temperature aqueous solution and high-temperature molten salt for tungsten and cobalt. H₂WO₄ was obtained from spent carbide in an aqueous solution, and we calcined it to obtain WO₃, which was used as a raw material to obtain tungsten by using molten salt electrodeposition. The influence of the current efficiency and the electrochemical behavior of the discharge precipitation of W(VI) were also studied. The calcination results showed that the morphology of WO₃ was regular and there were no other impurities. The maximum current efficiency of 82.91% was achieved in a series of electrodeposition experiments. According to XRD and SEM analysis, the recovered product was high purity tungsten, which belongs to the simple cubic crystal system. In the W(VI) reduction mechanism experiments, the electrochemical process of W(VI) in NaCl-Na₂WO₄-WO₃ molten salt was investigated using linear scanning voltammetry (LSV) and chronoamperometry in a three-electrode system. The LSV showed that W(VI) was reduced at the cathode in two steps and the electrode reaction was controlled by diffusion. The fitting results of chronoamperometry showed that the nucleation mechanism of W(VI) was an instantaneous nucleation mode, and the diffusion coefficient was 7.379×10⁻¹⁰ cm²·s⁻¹.