2017-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2017 Volume 1. Barrios Intl. Symp. / Non-ferrous Smelting & Hydro/Electrochemical Processing
| Editors: | Kongoli F, Palacios M, Buenger T, Meza JH, Delgado E, Joudrie MC, Gonzales T, Treand N |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2017 |
| Pages: | 264 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-61-4 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
CD shopping page
Extraction and Separation of Thorium from Monizite Leach Liquor
Chul Joo Kim1; Ho-Sung Yoon1; Kyeong Woo Chung1;1KOREA INSTITUTE OF GEOSCIENCE AND MINERAL RESOURCES (KIGAM), Daejeon, Korea (Republic of [South] Korea);
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 49
Topic: 6
Abstract:
There are two hundred varieties of minerals containing rare earth elements (REEs). Among all, only three minerals namely bastnaesite, monazite and xenotime are having the significant amount of the REEs. Monazite, being the second abundant source of rare earth, contains radioactivity elements such as thorium. In hydrometallurgical process for recovery of REEs from monazite ores, thorium is discharged as radioactivity residue/slag which does not only harm to environment and human beings. Therefore, thorium has been considered as unwelcome material incorporated in monazite. However, the demand of thorium is increasing day-by-day due to its diversity of industrial applications. Especially, interest in the commercialization of a thorium fuel cycle for generating nuclear power has been lately much increased.
Hydrometallurgy is the most important field in metal recovery technology. For thorium recovery from monazite, solvent extraction is the key technique and most reliable method to reach target metal recovery with as much as minimum waste generation. In this work, the separation and recovery of thorium from monazite ore leach liquors by use of solvent extraction method were studied. Five different types of extractant were tested and the better extractant systems were identified. Further, separation of REEs from thorium, scrubbing of the co-extracted elements was studied. Finally, the recovery studies were established.
More details will be discussed in the presentation