Yunnan Complex Silicate Containing Scandium Mineral Beneficiation - Leaching

Scandium is a kind of important high-tech strategic materials, and indispensab-le raw material to the defense industry. Scandium metal has been widely used in aerospace, nuclear energy, superconductivity, rockets, light cars, high-speed locomotives, Marine, naval, missiles, plane and so on.Scandium is expensive, and the main countries producing scandium in the world are China, Russia, Japan, the United States, Norway, France and Ukraine and so on. Currently Scandium products made in China are mainly sold in China and few of them are exported abroad. Scandium is extracted mainly from bauxite, titanium ore, uranium ore, tungsten ore, tin and some rare metal ore in China and abroad. However the species containing scandium mineral ores are normally single, and most of them are single metal ore. The extraction of scandium is also from titanium white waste acid and chloride dust, but report on extracting scandium from a variety of silicate minerals containing scandium is very little.This paper chooses silicate minerals containing scandium in Yunnan province as the object of research, and dressing-leaching experiment of this complex ore have been done. The main research works are as follows:The mineralogical of the sample is studied. Research shows that the useful material of the mineral is scandium; its recovery grade of Sc2O3 is 87.8 g/t and the main ore of including scandium are silicate.According to the mineral composition analysis, ore is in dark grey or black etc. Ore of plagioclase, angle flash stone and through pyroxene etc, is half since form-since form, constituting half since form granular structure. Scandium ore exists in most of the plagioclase, hornblende and diopside in hypidiomorphic—euhedral granular, constituting hypidiomorphic granular texture. Scandium distributes in the scandium-containing mineral with the isomorphism of speciation.Enrichment experiment of the silicate mineral dressing contains scandium in yunnan is studied. The results from low intensity magnetic separation, shaking table re-election, and strong magnetic separation show that single separate process is more difficult to enrich scandium.The union craft of low intensity magnetic separati- on—classification in shaking table—strong intensity magnetic separation, enriches scandium of containing Scandium mineral, which can get Scandium concentrate with 41.91% production rate 122g/t Sc2O3 grade, and 58.23% recovery.Experiments of Scandium concentrate leaching are studied. The best concentra-te leaching process condition of Scandium is that:leaching agent could be HCl; HCl liquid density is 15.2%; dosage of No.2 leaching reagent is 4%; the concentrate milling fineness is less than 0.05mm; heating temperature is 90℃; continuous stirring time is 12 hours and the leaching rate of Scandium is 88.33%.