Recovery of rare earth elements from El-Sela effluent solutions

The study area of Gabal El Sela at Halaib environ is located at about 20 km west of Abu Ramad City, Egypt. An uraniferous ore material associated with REE was subjected to sulphuric acid leaching for the extraction of uranium mainly and REEs as a by-product. 93.9% of U and 60% of REEs content were leached using −0.5 mm ground ore with 100 g/l sulfuric acid, acid/ore ratio of 2.0 and agitate for 6 h at 40 °C. After uranium extraction, effluent solutions containing 135 ppm rare earths were treated with 30% ammonium hydroxide to pH of 9.3 to enhance the rare earth elements concentration. The precipitated cake was filtered then dried at 110 °C. The dried cake containing 16.2% rare earth elements was dissolved by hydrochloric acid at pH 1.0. The rare earths precipitated cakes of 36.9, 45.7 and 48.7% REEs were recovered successfully from the chloride leach liquor of 900 ppm rare earths by using 5% v/v from 50% HF, 6% wt/v oxalic acid and 4.8% wt/v oxalic acid to chloride solution with heating for one hour which respectively. 73.5% REEs precipitated cake was achieved by double precipitation, firstly by hydrofluoric acid followed by oxalic acid precipitation.