Modelling of the leaching process by the extended quadrature method of moments

An approach based on the extended quadrature method of moments (EQMOM) has been developed to solve the population balance equation written for the evolution of shrinking-core particles in transient leaching processes. It has been shown that the EQMOM can naturally address the dependency of the shrinkage-core model on the unreacted core size and outer size of particles. The approach has been validated by comparing its predictions with either analytical or reference solutions for several test cases. Moreover, the approach has been employed to simulate an experimental leaching process taken from the literature. The obtained results confirm the significance of considering the particle size distribution in the simulation of the leaching process, hence the importance of solution methods such as that presented in this work. Finally, it has been shown that the proposed approach is also useful for the simulation of the dissolution process with shrinking particles.