Separation of Uranium and Rare Earth Elements with High Purity from Low-Grade Gibbsite-Bearing Shale Ore by Different Chelating Resins

Abstract

It is very difficult to recover uranium and rare earth elements (REEs) from low-grade ore especially gibbsite-bearing shale. The difficulty lies not only in the separation of uranium from REEs, but also the very low concentration of uranyl ions and REEs comparison with other metal ions in liquor. In this study, we perform the recovery in three steps. In the first step, involves the chelating resins are synthesized. The second step, then, involves the leaching of the ore sample (leach liquor), which can be performed by two methods—direct agitation and column leaching, whichever the most efficient under stated conditions. A sulfuric acid solution was used, with different concentrations of 0.5–3.0% (W/W) with different solid liquid ratios (S/L) of 1:2 to 1:5. The effect of the leaching time was calculated and the optimum condition of agitation was determined. In the third and last step, the leach liquor is applied to the choice synthesized resins.

Keywords:

• Agitation
• leaching
• low-grade
• rare earth elements
• uranium