Clean hydrometallurgical route to recover zinc, silver, lead, copper, cadmium and iron from hazardous jarosite residues produced during zinc hydrometallurgy

► The extraction fractions of various valuable metals during NH4Cl leaching are very high. The sintered residue was leached in 6 mol L−1 aqueous NH4Cl solution at 105 °C, followed by filtration. The leaching extraction of Zn, Pb, Cu, Cd and Ag are more than 95%. ► The process can detoxified the hazardous elements such as Pb, As, Cd thoroughly. Then the NH4Cl leaching residue were leached again in 30 wt% aqueous NaOH solution for 1 h at 160 °C, and about 94% of As and 73% of Si were removed from the residue. ► The final residue contains about 55 wt% Fe, and have the potential to be used as iron concentrate.