User:Courtneyhoof/sandbox

= Draft Article- Solvometallurgy = Solvometallurgy is a branch of extractive metallurgy, and a complementary process to hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy. Solvometallurgy is the process of using non-aqueous solutions to extract metals from ores, production scraps, urban waste, and industrial process residues. Solvometallurgy is similar to hydrometallurgy but the key difference is it lacks an aqueous phase. A non-aqueous phase must be at least 50% solvent by volume, and can be composed of molecular organic solvents, ionic liquids, deep-eutectic solvents, liquefied ammonia, concentrated sulfuric acid, or super critical carbon dioxide.

History
Over history humans have depleted most readily available sources of metal.. When there was no longer a feasible source to retrieve metals it became necessary to extract these metals from ores, and as the ores are now depleting it has become necessary to extract metals from sources that previously had been considered waste. Sources such as urban waste, production scraps, and industrial process residues became valuable for their potential metal extraction. The use of solvometallurgy dates back to the late 1940's to recover uranium from ores through leaching with acetone-HCl and alkylphosphoric acids.

Leaching
Leaching is a necessary process in solvometallurgy, and is used to extract the desired metals in non-aqueous media by converting them into soluble salts. In solvometallurgy leaching can be carried out with either solutions of mineral acids in water-miscible polar organic solvents, or water-immiscible nonpolar organic solvents with dissolved extractants. Chelating extractants can be used to increase selectivity when used as lixivants. Leaching can be carried out by direct solid leaching, non-aqueous-slurry leaching, and aqueous-slurry solvent extraction. Typically in solvometellargy the leaching step is combined with the solvent extraction step.

Solvent Extraction
Solvent extraction in solvometallurgy involves two mutually immiscible solvents. Traditional hydrometallurgy involves one organic phase and one aqueous phase, while sovlometallurgy replaces the aqueous phase with a second organic phase. This can include two molten salts, a molten salt and a molten metal, a molten salt and organic solvent, or two organic solvents. The solvent combination chosen requires good solubility of the extractant and extracted metals in the less-polar phase, and good solubility of the metal salts that will be extracted in the more-polar phase.

Ion Exchange
Ion exchange is used to remove metal salts from aqueous solutions after the leaching process. The process typically uses water, but for solvometallurgical processes can use lower alcohols, polyalcohols, ethers, ketones, organic acids, pyridine, DMF, and DMSO. Organic solutions created from the listed solvents and water can recover more metals than an aqueous solution.

Precipitation
If additional separation is required after leaching the metals precipitation or crystallization can be used. Precipitation is the formation of a solid substance from a solution. In solvometallurgy this precipitate can be formed by raegent addition, addition of an anti-solvent, or evaporation of solvent.

Electrolysis
Electrolysis involves passing an electric current through a solution producing chemical decomposition. In solvometallurgy a non-aqueous electrolyte is used o cause elecrodeposition of the metals at the cathode.

Examples
Solvometallury has been applied in the past decades to recover metals from complex ores such as zirconium and eudilyte from soluble silica. This process commonly incorporates a mechanochemical step of mechanical activation prior to leaching. This step improves leaching efficiency by making the metal ions bind more easily to the ores. Mechanical activation is commonly done by ball milling for up to 3 minutes. By operating this process in the absence of water, the formation of silicic acid or nonfilterable silica gel is performed.

Metals like uranium and vanadium have also been recovered from complex ores. This is performed by treating the ore with H2SO4 at 250 C. The ore is then leached with phosphoric acid in tetrachloroethylene.

Benefits
The application of solvometallurgy can be very beneficial in the extraction of metals, especially when traditional extraction methods are difficult. These benefits include using very little water, reducing energy consumption, and its suitability for extracting low grade ores.

In the solvometallury process, there is no aqueous phase, which is beneficial for areas limited in water or where water is not readily available. Because the process is not dependent on water, extraction can also be mobile for operating in remote locations. While some water may be needed, using a small volume of water also implies that solvometallurgy produces little wastewater to be treated, proving beneficial to the environment, human health, and energy consumption. Energy consumption is further reduced because it does not require additional heating in extraction like pyrometallurgy. The organic solvents used in solvometallurgy requires less heat to vaporize than water. Avoiding additional heat greatly lowers the energy needed in the process. Combining units, such as extraction and leaching into one step also lowers input energy and simplifies the metal extraction process. Solvometallurgy is useful in the extraction of low grade ores, which is important if products are complex in their composition. As the supply of high grade ores depletes, making it important to make use of low grade metals or process residues.

Challenges
Challenges for this process mainly involve the cost of solvents. Solvents cost much more that water, and when non-aqueous phases are required the total cost for large scale processes can get extremely high. A second challenge is the limitations on studies due to the lack of knowledge on this process. Solvometallurgy is a relatively new technology and here is still a lot to learn about it.

Training completed

 * Contributing images and media files

= Week 10 = Moved draft into Wikipedia to add citations and format

= Week 8 =

Training completed

 * Peer review

Thinking about Wikipedia
-Neutrality is important because if the people writing an article support one portion of it more than another their writing can be biased.

- Wikipedia has made an enormous amount of information available to the public, and created a space for open peer evaluation. The limitation of Wikipedia is that their isn't a systematic way to make sure every single topic is accurate.

- This excludes sources like company websites, blogs, news, etc. This can limit what can be written on new technology because some topics may not have scientific journals written on them yet because they are evolving, and this can prevent articles from keeping up with new technologies.

- 100 years ago contributors would be all books because the internet would not be such a powerful tool. 100 years from now contributions would probably be more up to date with an increased speed of technology.

Peer Review
Will review

Bioaugmentation- Class edit on the introduction

and bioremediation

Need feedback to respond to

= Week 7 =

Training completed

 * Sandboxes and mainspace


 * Plagiarsism

Outline for draft written, and lead section created.

= Week 6 =

Training completed

 * Editing Medical topics

Plagiarism and Sources
-Blog posts and press releases can be very opinionated, and might not be held to the highest standard of truth or unbiased opinions.

- Companies websites are biased towards their own product, and may be misleading by omitting or exaggerating certain information.

- Copyright violation is using something that is trademarked, this can be done even if you reword an idea in your words, because the concept or technique you are discussing is already claimed. Plagiarism is if you take information and repeat it in someone else's words.

- To avoid plagiarism and paraphrasing it is important to read many different sources to understand a topic, and then write in your own words off of your understanding.

Planned Contribution
The was originally to edit the biometallurgy wikipedia page, but due to multiple people working on this topic I will now be working with a partner creating a solvometallurgy wikipedia page.

= Week 5 =

Wikipedia Edits
Added a source to phenol-chloroform Extraction of Diagnostic Microbiology

"Terminator genes have been proposed as a method to prevent gene expression in germinating seeds. This method works by blocking a sequence of gene expression with an active promoter gene, excising a blocker sequence with a recombinase gene, and encoding a repressor of the recombinase. " Added to Genetic Pollution and cited

= Week 4 =

Training completed

 * Evaluating articles and sources

Content gap
A lack of information within the description of a topic. These can arise if biased sources are used that lean towards one method/ option over another. These could be fixed by using many sources, understanding the whole topic before you begin writing, and have a peer review to look for subconscious bias.

Unbiased: Having no personal investment in a portion of topic.

Article evaluation
Biotechnology

The first paragraph includes a direct referenced citation instead of original phrasing

The second paragraph doesn't sound very factual with non specific time descriptions and terms like "largely believed"

the second paragraph gives a brief history even though there is a whole history section

The list of relevant biological information seems slim

the article is neutral

most, but not all, links work, they do support claims, although some include direct quotes and some do not

There are many many references, some seem neutral and others biased, overall i think it's a good mixture

The article is rated B-class level-3 vital article

Its part of Wikiproject chemical and bio engineering, wikiproject molecular and cell biology, wikiproject technology, wikiproject technology and several others

Many edits in the talk page most of which fixed, the page also includes placed where the article is used

The definition is similar to the one we discuss in class, but it gives many other applications where ours has tended to be more medical

= Week 3 =

Training completed

 * Eikipedia essentials
 * Editing basics