On The Production of Neodymia from Egyptian Beach Monazite after Sulphuric Acid Processing By Fractional Precipitation Method

Rabie. K. A.; Abd El-Fatah. A. I. L.**

Nuclear Material Authority,

  The rare earth elements behave as a single chemical entity. The problem of separating rare earth elements for scientific or industrial uses has been one of the most challenging tasks of rare earth technology. The present work is directed to investigate the separation of neodymia from Egyptian beach monazite mineral after sulphuric acid digestion by fractional precipitation methods. The rare earth hydrous oxides concentrate produced from Egyptian monazite after cerium separation process contains ~ 30% neodymia of total REEs continents. In trial to fractionate the rare earth concentrate, Cerium earths (mainly light & middle) is separated from yttrium earths (mainly heavy) by precipitation of the former as the sparingly soluble double alkali sulfates. The double sodium salt, REE2(SO4)3.Na2SO4. 2H2O is typically used. The process was repeated four times (cycles) to find the best separation (fractionation) efficiency with the highest recovery percent for the proposed element. A systematic study, investigation and inspection for the experimental conditions such as time of the precipitant addition, temperature of precipitation and variation of the stiochiometric ratio between the REEs and precipitant were fulfilled to obtain the best optimization and adaptation conditions for the process which may be applied in high scale of separation work design. The best conditions for precipitation of neodymium oxide commercial concentrate are in temperature range between (90:120) with stiochiometric ratio range of 1:1.25 to1:1.5 while stirring for 10 minutes with 5 minutes stepwise precipitant addition time.