John Litz Email & Phone Number

Consulting and contract R&D for the mineral and metal associated industries.

Responsible for research, development, and engineering services with emphasis on process development, process design, process modeling, plant design, waste recycling, waste water treatment, and process consulting. Recent projects include pressure leaching and bioleaching of sulfide minerals, sodium carbonate recovery from trona, treatment of drinking water and/or wastewater to remove radium, arsenic, uranium, and ammonia, and recovery of vanadium, molybdenum, and nickel from a tar sand waste product. METSIM modeling studies include flotation of copper-cobalt ore; pressure oxidation concentrates and electrolytic recovery of copper and cobalt; wet-air oxidation of gasifier soot containing vanadium-molybdenum-nickel and ion exchange-solvent extraction recovery of the values; ion exchange recovery of uranium from well water; ion exchange recovery of barium from well water; adsorptive recovery of ammonia from waste water; and processing of uranium-vanadium ores for recovery of values.

Responsible for research, development, and engineering services with emphasis on process development, process design, process modeling, plant design, waste recycling, waste water treatment, and process consulting. Directed numerous treatability programs on lead and mercury bearing wastes/soils including soil washing and stabilization. Developed process for recovering residual values from wastes from electrolytic manganese and manganese dioxide manufacture. METSIM modeling included pressure oxidation of copper-molybdenum concentrates with various recovery methods for the copper and molybdenum, and preparation of copper chemicals from the leaching of various sources of scrap.

Responsible for research, development, analytical and engineering services plus design and supervision of field remediation activities.

Management of laboratory and pilot plant programs for hydrometallurgical and/or pyrometallurgical extraction of values from ores, concentrates, dusts, slags, catalysts, waste waters, and neutralization sludges. Specific projects included roasting and/or pressure oxidation of refractory gold and silver ores; manganese chemicals from slags; magnesium chemicals from wastes; vanadium, molybdenum, cobalt and nickel from spent catalysts, petroleum coke, and fly ash; copper, zinc, bismuth, lead, molybdenum, and cadmium from flue dusts; developing lixiviants for in-situ uranium leaching, developing conventional leach, heap leach and roast/leach processes for uranium ores, developing processes to recover molybdenum by-product from uranium ore processing, removal of radium and enriched or natural uranium from waste waters, removal of cyanide and cyanide complexes from waste waters, recovering rhenium and molybdenum from concentrates, developing a pressure leaching process to recover cobalt and nickel from a laterite, recovering beryllium from refractory ores; and recovering gallium and germanium from ores. Process engineering, design, modeling and/or capital and operating cost estimates for processing wastes, catalysts, dusts, ores and concentrates uranium/vanadium ores, tungsten ores, and laterites. Market studies and plant audits/evaluations. State of the art review of molybdenum ore processing. Generated interim guidelines for uranium and vanadium mining and milling effluents. Designed laboratories/pilot plant facilities for CETEM (Brazil).

Responsible for hydrometallurgical research on extraction of chromium, niobium, tantalum, molybdenum, bismuth, uranium, and vanadium from ores, concentrates, slags, and intermediate products. Responsible for commercial production of vanadium chloride catalysts and field programs for the first in-situ leaching of uranium in the U.S..

Conducted hydrometallurgical research on recovery of copper, cobalt, lead, zinc, and bismuth from concentrates. Developed flowsheet for recovery of copper and molybdenum from mixed sulfide concentrates. Developed solvent extraction/precipitation process for recovering vanadium and molybdenum by-products. Provided technical assistance to uranium-vanadium milling operations, including roasting, leaching, solvent extraction, and ion exchange.

Performed hydrometallurgical development work on extraction of uranium and vanadium from ores. Provided commercial plant technical assistance. Determined criteria for optimization of uranium recovery by ion exchange and developed precipitation and solvent extraction process for recovery of vanadium by-product.

Msc, Industrial Management

Met Engr, Extractive Metallurgy