Acid leaching of manganiferous ores by sucrose: Kinetic modelling and related statistical analysis

This work reports the kinetic study of a manganiferous ore leaching in acid media by sucrose as reducing agent. A shrinking core model with variable activation energy was found to success fully fit experimental data of manganese Extraction yields vs leaching time . This model finds a physical confirmation both in the complex reactions th at take place during manganese leaching and the different reactivity and ac cessibility of the mineralogical forms present in the ores. A non linear regression analysis has been performed in order to estimate th e adjustable model parameters and a statistical analysis has also been carr ied out in order to evaluate the significativity of the estimated values. ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.