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Recovery of scandium from bauxite residue—red mud: a review

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Abstract

Red mud is a slimy caustic residue generated from alumina production. Taking into account the relatively considerable content and availability of scandium, red mud can be viewed as an important and promising scandium resource rather than a solid waste. This paper is primarily to review the investigations of scandium recovery from red mud based on the most widely used hydrometallurgical processes including acid leaching, solvent extraction and ion exchange adsorption. It is thought that recovery of scandium from red mud should be considered as a direct objective rather than a by-product in the development of overall flowsheet. In order to achieve environmentally-friendly processes with high scandium recovery and low cost, more attention is required to be paid to optimizing the selective leaching of scandium to decrease mineral acid consumption and alleviate pollution, and developing new solvent extraction systems and novel ion exchange adsorption materials with high selectivity and recognition for scandium.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51234008 and 51574024) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2016M590046).

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  1. School of Metallurgical and Ecological Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Na Zhang, Hong-Xu Li & Xiao-Ming Liu

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Rare and Precious Metals Green Recycling and Extraction, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Na Zhang, Hong-Xu Li & Xiao-Ming Liu

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Zhang, N., Li, HX. & Liu, XM. Recovery of scandium from bauxite residue—red mud: a review. Rare Met. 35, 887–900 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-016-0805-5

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