Leaching process of rare earths from weathered crust elution-deposited rare earth ore

In order to strengthen the leaching procedure, the chemical processes of leaching rare earths (RE) from the weathered crust elution-deposited rare earth ore were investigated frow the viewpoints of kinetics, hydrodynamic and mass transfer. The results show that the leaching hydrodynamics follows the Darcy law. The leaching kinetics can be described by the shrinking core model; the leaching process is controlled by diffusion of porous solid layer; and the mass transfer can be described with Van Deemter equation. This provides a theoretic basis and a scientific approach with high efficiency and optimized extraction conditions in industrial practice.