Direct leaching of rare earth elements and uranium from phosphate rocks

Khaledi, Nahhar Al; Taha, Mohamed; Hussein, A. E. M.; Hussein, El-Sayed Mady; Yahyaoui, Adil El; Haneklaus, Nils

doi:10.1088/1757-899x/479/1/012065

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Relevant REE concentrations of the Sra Ouertane low-grade phosphate rock are provided in Table 4. The Sra Ouertane phosphate rock deposit showed relatively high REE concentrations by Tunisian [48] and international [9,49] standards, and recovering REEs might be attractive when developing the ore [8,50,51]. During the beneficiation process, all REEs were concentrated as volatile constituents were driven off.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal Beneficiation of Sra Ouertane (Tunisia) Low-Grade Phosphate Rock

Abbes

Hermann²,

Steiner

et al. 2020

Minerals

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Low-grade phosphate rock from Sra Ouertane (Tunisia) was beneficiated using a thermal treatment consisting of calcination, quenching, and disliming. Untreated phosphate rock samples (group 1), calcined phosphate rock samples (group 2), as well as calcined, quenched, and dislimed (group 3) phosphate rock samples, were investigated using inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). Besides, the particle size distribution of the aforementioned three groups was determined. The proposed thermal treatment successfully increased the P2O5 content of the untreated phosphate rock from 20.01 wt% (group 1) to 24.24 wt% (group 2) after calcination and, finally, 27.24 wt% (group 3) after calcination, quenching, and disliming. It was further found that the concentration of relevant accompanying rare earth elements (Ce, La, Nd, Pr, Sm, and Y) was increased and that the concentration of Cd could be significantly reduced from 30 mg/kg to 14 mg/kg with the proposed treatment. The resulting phosphate concentrate showed relatively high concentrations in metal oxides: Ʃ MgO, Fe2O3, Al2O3 = 3.63 wt% and silica (9.81 wt%) so that it did not meet the merchant grade specifications of a minimum P2O5 content of 30 wt% yet. Removal of these elements could be achieved using additional appropriate separation techniques.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal Beneficiation of Sra Ouertane (Tunisia) Low-Grade Phosphate Rock

Abbes

Hermann²,

Steiner

et al. 2020

Minerals

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“…As Table 3 shows, the phosphatic clay contained 258.4 ppm of TREEs, of which 66.1 % and 33.9 % belong to LREEs and HREEs, respectively. This content level is relatively lower than that of run-of-mine phosphate ores and phosphate concentrates reported in the literature (Abd El-Mottaleb et al, 2016;Al Khaledi et al, 2019;Banihashemi et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2016). However, the phosphatic clay has a similar rare earth content as other types of feedstocks that have been investigated as promising sources of REEs, such as coal refuse (Zhang and Honaker, 2019b, 2020, 2019b, coal combustion ash (Lanzerstorfer, 2018;Liu et al, 2019), and red mud (Abhilash et al, 2014;Khairul et al, 2019).…”

Section: Sample Characterizationmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Phosphorite, or phosphate rock, is a naturally occurring material with an elevated phosphorous content of around 5-13 % (Al Khaledi et al, 2019). As reported by the U.S. Geological Survey, world total reserves of phosphate rock ore were around 69 billion metric tons, and nearly 240 million metric tons of phosphate rock ore was mined in 2019 (Jasinski, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Phosphate rock contains an average of 0.1-0.8 % rare earth oxides, which are carried to downstream products after physical and/or physicochemical processing, phosphoric acid production, and fertilizer preparation processes (Soltani et al, 2018). Therefore, many studies have been performed to recover REEs from not only phosphate rock ore but also the downstream products, such as apatite concentrate, flotation tailings, phosphatic clay, phosphogypsum, phosphoric acid, phosphoric acid sludge (Al Khaledi et al, 2019;Amine et al, 2019;Antonick et al, 2019;Cánovas et al, 2019;Eskanlou and Huang, 2021;Kim et al, 2016;Liang et al, 2017Liang et al, , 2018Liang et al, , 2017Preston et al, 1996;Soltani et al, 2018Soltani et al, , 2019Soltani et al, , 2019Wu et al, 2019). The recovery methods that have been employed include but are not limited to physical separations, acid leaching, crystallization, precipitation, ion exchange, and solvent extraction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the second stage, the solid residue of the first stage reacted with 2.0 M HCl to dissolve REEs. Khaledi et al (2019) successfully extracted greater than 90 % of REEs while less than 10 % of P 2 O 5 from a phosphate rock using a leaching reagent under appropriate conditions. Soltani et al (2019) found that more than 90 % of P 2 O 5 was extracted from a fluorapatite concentrate using phosphoric acid as the lixiviant, while around 99 % of REEs remained in the leaching residual solid, which can be recovered through an acid baking-water leaching process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Enhanced leaching recovery of rare earth elements from a phosphatic waste clay through calcination pretreatment

Li²,

Huang³

et al. 2021

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Leaching of rare earths from Abu Tartur (Egypt) phosphate rock with phosphoric acid

Roshdy

Haggag

Masoud

et al. 2022

J Mater Cycles Waste Manag

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The leaching of rare earth elements (REEs) from Egyptian Abu Tartur phosphate rock using phosphoric acid has been examined and was subsequently optimized to better understand if such an approach could be industrially feasible. Preliminary experiments were performed to properly define the design of experiments. Afterward, 24 full factorial design was implemented to optimize the leaching process. Optimum REEs leaching efficiency (96.7 ± 0.9%) was reached with the following conditions: phosphoric acid concentration of 30 wt.-% P2O5, liquid/solid ratio, mL/g, of 5:1, at 20 °C, and 120 min of leaching time. The apparent activation energy of the dissolution of REEs from phosphate rock using the phosphoric acid solution was -19.6 kJ/mol. D2EHPA was subsequently applied as an organic solvent for REEs separation from the acquired leach liquor. REEs stripping and precipitation were conducted, and finally, rare earth oxides with a purity of 88.4% were obtained. The leach liquor was further treated with concentrated sulfuric acid to recover the used phosphoric acid and produce gypsum with a purity of >95% at the same time. A flow diagram for this innovative cleaner production process was developed, and larger-scale experiments are proposed to further understand this promising approach to comprehensive phosphate rock processing.

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Direct leaching of rare earth elements and uranium from phosphate rocks

Cited by 17 publications

References 26 publications

Thermal Beneficiation of Sra Ouertane (Tunisia) Low-Grade Phosphate Rock

Thermal Beneficiation of Sra Ouertane (Tunisia) Low-Grade Phosphate Rock

Enhanced leaching recovery of rare earth elements from a phosphatic waste clay through calcination pretreatment

Leaching of rare earths from Abu Tartur (Egypt) phosphate rock with phosphoric acid

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