Recovery of Zn(II) from multielemental acidic chloride solution with hydrophobic 3-pyridineketoxime

•The oxime can efficiently extract zinc from HCl solutions.•From multielemental solution the extraction occurs only in case of zinc ions.•Removal decreased with the increasing metal concentration in an aqueous feed.•Reduction of zinc concentration from 65 to 2 g/L occurs in three-stage process.

The main goal of this work was the application of an oxime of 1-(3-pyridyl)undecan-1-one as an selective extractant of zinc(II) ions from strong acidic chloride solutions containing also ions of iron(II), iron(III) or copper(II). The effect of different variables influencing the extraction of zinc(II) ions such as the concentration of hydrochloric acid, zinc(II) and chloride ions has been investigated. The studies also covered the determination of selectivity of the extraction of zinc(II) over iron(II), iron(III) or copper(II) and hydrochloric acid to organic phase during extraction and further the determination of the optimum stripping process condition. Laboratory-scale experiments were also performed and obtained results indicated that proposed extractant is efficient and highly selective in the zinc extraction and it can be proposed to zinc ions removal from real spent pickling solution.