The Recovery of Copper and Tin from Waste Tin Stripping Solution Part II: Kinetic Analysis

In a previous work we had carried out a thermodynamic analysis to determine if copper can be recovered from a tin stripping process (1). In this paper we present a kinetic analysis to determine the current efficiency for copper electrodeposition from a tin strip waste solution. We have performed electrochemical stripping analysis to from simulated and real waste tin strip solutions. Copper is electrodeposited from solutions containing only copper and nitric acid, copper and nitric acid with ferric and tin ions, or waste from tin-strip processes. Our results show that copper can be recovered at reasonably high current efficiency from solutions containing nitrate ions. The presence of ferric ions, however, reduces current efficiency significantly.