Patent ID: 8268285

Claim:
A process for recovering elemental tellurium (Te) from a solution, comprising: reducing tellurium in the solution from Te 6+ to being substantially Te 4+ using a reducing agent before acid leaching the solution and before heating the acid leached solution to a predetermined temperature for a predetermined time, wherein the reducing agent is a reducing sugar or a hydrolysis product of a sugar; adjusting a pH of the acid leached solution to a pH value greater than 11 after the tellurium is reduced by leaching the acid leached solution with an alkali solution causing the reduced tellurium (Te 4+ ) to migrate into the alkali solution; obtaining an alkali solution filtrate by filtering off the alkali solution; adjusting the pH of the alkali solution filtrate to a pH value ranging from 4 to 5 to precipitate tellurium dioxide (TeO 2 ) in an acidic solution; obtaining the tellurium dioxide (TeO 2 ) precipitate by filtering off the acidic solution; and recovering elemental tellurium from the tellurium dioxide (TeO 2 ) precipitate.