Effect of the temperature and the porosity of the gettering process on the removal of heavy metals from Tunisian phosphate rock

Gettering is a process by which unwanted impurities are removed by providing an alternative location, this method used by many researchers for the purification of silicon wafers or powder. In this work, this method is used for the first time to remove the impurities from Tunisian phosphate rock (TPR). This method consists in two steps: the rapid thermal processing by infrared furnace followed by a rapid chemical etching. In order to enhance the efficiency of this process, a porous layer on the surface of grains was grown. By this method, we have demonstrated in this present work that the majority of impurities were well extracted from TPR. UV–visible absorption spectra show that the highest intensity of absorbance (∼1) appears for the porous sample treated at 900 °C (P900 °C), which due to the presence of large quantities of impurities in the extracted solution. These results were well confirmed by AAS and ICP-AES which show that the majority of the impurities have been almost removed for the P900 °C sample. Keywords: Gettering process, Porous phosphate rock, Temperature, Impuritie