The present study describes purification of zirconium from hafnium from the Egyptian zircon ore, by selective leaching, successive precipitations and two analytical techniques. The obtained results indicated that three fractions of Zr-concentrates were obtained by selective precipitation of the leached solution, namely: PPt-A, PPt-B and PPt-C. In the precipitation process, the PPt-B fraction, Zr exists with actinides (U and Th) and less than 0.002% of the original hafnium in the mother solution. This zirconium fraction, PPt-B, was further purified by fractional precipitation or anion exchange chromatography. The purity of Zr obtained by both methods reached 99%. Meanwhile, recoveries were varied between 64% by fractional precipitation and 95% by anion exchange chromatography. The ratio of Hafnium to zirconium was 24 x 10-3 in original Egyptian zircon concentrate. This ratio decreased to 17x10-3, 2.17x10-3, and 3.52x10-3 for PPt-A, PPt-B and PPt-C fractions respectively. Further decrease in ratio of hafnium to zirconium to 0.18x10-3 and 0.15x10-3 occurred for anion exchange chromatography and fractional precipitation techniques.
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