Prevention of Silica Gel Formation for Eudialyte Study Using New Digestion Reactor

Abstract

This work includes a combined hydrometallurgical treatment of a eudialyte ore sample with a subsequent preparation of leaching residue using mechanical separation methods. Hydrometallurgical treatment contains dry digestion with sulphuric acid at room temperature and filtration of the obtained product. The objectives of adopting these procedures are to test a new digestion reactor in order to prevent silica gel formation from the eudialyte ore. The obtained results revealed that silica gel formation is prevented during dissolution with sulphuric acid. A high leaching efficiency of light rare earth elements (La, Ce, Nd, Y) was reached using the dry digestion process with sulphuric acid, where the starting molarity was 12 mol/L. After the filtration process, magnetic separation is studied as the main method to recover weakly magnetic minerals like amphiboles and pyroxenes from the leaching residue in the magnetic fraction and feldspars in the nonmagnetic fraction. A new combined research strategy was developed for the production of different concentrates such as the one bearing Zr, Hf, and Nb.