New phosphoric acid process expands available resources

Almost all phosphoric acid is produced via the wet-acid process (WAP), which requires relatively pure raw materials and produces large volumes of a potentially hazardous, special waste called phosphogypsum, which is highly regulated in terms of storage and disposal. A typical WAP operation will produce around 5 tons of phosphogypsum per ton of phosphate in phosphoric acid. JDCPhosphate Inc. (Fort Meade, Fla.; www.jdcphosphate.com) has demonstrated its Improved Hard Process (IHP) for producing high-quality phosphoric acid, which not only avoids the production of phosphogypsum, but also enables the use of much lower-grade ores (13–14% phosphate content versus the 28% or more required for WAP). “The wet-acid process simply doesn’t work that well if the impurities in the phosphate rock are too high, things like iron, magnesium, aluminum and so on,” explains Timothy Cotton, CEO of JDCPhosphate. Furthermore, phosphoric acid produced via WAP requires various levels of upgrading, depending on the end use. “We can use more of the phosphate rock than the wet-acid process allows. We can’t overstate how important it is for the phosphate industry to widen the parameters of acceptable phosphate rock from what is currently used in the…