Abstract
The aim of the present work is to elucidate the extraction mechanism of metals by chelating agents. We selected the benzoylacetone-copper system as a typical one, in which the reaction of the complex formation is very rapid due to the Jahn-Teller effect and the chelating agent has relatively large solubility in water. Therefore, the contribution of the aqueousphase reaction to metal extraction seems to be stronger in this system than in other systems involving slower complexation reaction with less watersoluble chelating agents. It will be shown that the interfacial reaction process plays an important role in metal extraction even in this case.
