Abstract
Due to the demand for rare earth elements for everyday technology and applications, there has been much research initiation into the extraction and recovery of rare earth elements. An otherwise unknown mineral, eudialyte is a zircon silicate consisting of rare earth oxides, specifically the heavy REO yttrium (III), with only trace amounts of thorium and uranium. The first part of this project aimed at finding an efficient way to liberate and upgrade eudialyte to concentrate the REO content. A combination of gravity and magnetic separation techniques were employed, resulting in limited success. The second part looked at the hydrometallurgical processing of eudialyte through various leaching experiments with sulfuric acid. In all, this project will discuss why certain processes were utilized over others, as well as the difficulties that arose during processing.
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Notes
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All HLST conducted from this point forward were done at an SG of 3.2 using methylene iodide for best chance of gravity separation.
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Vaccarezza, V., Anderson, C. (2018). Beneficiation and Leaching Study of Norra Kärr Eudialyte Mineral. In: Kim, H., et al. Rare Metal Technology 2018. TMS 2018. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72350-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72350-1_4
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