Fabrication of Zinc Oxide from Zinc Dust and Its Characterization

Zinc dust, an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) hazardous waste no. K061 can now be used as a potential raw material for the preparation of zinc zinc oxide. At first zinc was leached from zinc dust in acid medium. The contaminated iron was precipitated out from this solution by oxidation at pH 3.95-4.05. Then zinc was precipitated from this solution as hydroxide by raising the pH 6.8-7.2, which on leached with water and filtered followed by two-step drying to produce zinc oxide. The percent purity of the product was found to about 99 and iron contamination in the product was lowered to 50 ppm on Spectrophotometric analysis. It is found that average particle diameter for the prepared sample is 117 μm for drying at 140°C and 63.6 μm for drying at 180°C. The phase obtained of the prepared sample is zincite and the crystal system was confirmed to be hexagonal by XRD (X-ray diffraction) analysis.