History, Development, Status and Opportunities for Kiln Phosphoric Acid

Keywords: Kiln phosphoric acid, KPA, Improved Hard Process, IHP, furnace acid process, Megy, JDCPhosphate, Lapple.

The wet acid process and the furnace acid process competed for dominance throughout much of the twentieth century. Kiln phosphoric acid (KPA) held the promise of blending the high purity production of the furnace acid process with the heat integration characteristics of the wet acid process (WAP) and therefore attracted a great deal of research attention by a number of professionals and companies in the field for the last several decades. Occidental Research piloted a successful process for the conduct of manufacturing phosphoric acid in the early 1980s that was optimised in the period 2002-2007 by Dr. Joseph Megy, quintupling the throughput capacity of the original process. He was issued a patent for the Improved Hard Process (IHP) in 2008. JDCPhosphate has constructed a 12,000-ton per year demonstration plant to validate the IHP process and is in start-up operations at this time. The beneficial consequences of a successful start-up include lower mining cost and losses, significant reserve additions, no high volume waste, and a high purity product. JDCPhosphate’s efforts to validate the IHP through the start-up of its demonstration plant in Fort Meade Fl. have achieved important milestones including the demonstration of phosphorus yield and temperature control in the kiln and conversion of that phosphorus into phosphoric acid. Efforts at the time of this writing focus on improving the quality of the feed agglomerates to the kiln, a problem confronted and solved in the iron ore industry and which JDCPhosphate is confident of solving as well.

Theodore (Tip) P Fowler, JDCPhosphate Inc, 3200 CR 630 W, Fort Meade, Fl. 33841-1720, USA.

20 pages, 3 plates, 5 figures, 1 table, 8 references.