Loading...
Beneficiation of rare earth elements bearing ancylite
Cui, Hao
Cui, Hao
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisor
Editor
Date
Date Issued
2015
Date Submitted
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Embargo Expires
2017-01-05
Abstract
The increasing demand for the rare earth elements (REEs) is driven by new technologies, including computers, automobiles and other advanced technology applications. Currently, bastnasesite, monazite and xenotime are three major commercial rare earth minerals throughout the world. China is the biggest rare earth producer, however, because of the restriction of Chinese rare earth export, the rest of the world has been to develop proper rare earth resources to replace supply from China. Ancylite, a rare earth strontium carbonate, is a potentially commercial rare earth mineral. In this research, the materials obtained from Bear Lodge, Rare Earth Resources, Ltd., were investigated to develop a proper procedure to efficiently separate rare earth minerals from their gangue minerals. Mineralogical characterization shows that ancylite is the dominant rare earth mineral, and calcite is the major gangue mineral, which is strongly associated with ancylite. The surface chemistry aspects, including electrokinetics, hydroxamic acid adsorption and microflotation, of ancylite, strontianite and calcite were also investigated. Fundamental understanding of the flotation chemistry for ancylite, calcite and strontianite was utilized to delineate the strategy of flotation chemistry for the materials from Bear Lodge. Magnetic separation combined with flotation was employed to beneficiate ancylite, and a preliminary evaluation was conducted as well. The end result shows the promising potential in the separation of ancylite by magnetic separation and froth flotation. This work was conducted within the Kroll Institute for Extractive Metallurgy (KIEM) and Critical Materials Institute (CMI).
Associated Publications
Rights
Copyright of the original work is retained by the author.