Recovery of Alkali Values from Trona Purge Streams Using Carbonation Techniques

Trona is a sodium carbonate compound that forms naturally and is processed into soda ash. Solution mining is practiced by Genesis Alkali to recover trona that was not previously extracted during the dry mining process. As such it is imperative that an economic process exist that allows for abundant recovery from the trona slurry. This project aims to derive an additional recovery process that is both efficient and economical by carbonating the purge stream of a pre-existing crystallizer at the Westvaco Genesis Alkali plant in Gillette, Wyoming, with the potential to expand to the company’s external Granger plant.