Water, Energy, Food and Environment
Journal license

Journal

Water, Energy, Food and Environment


Volume
& Issue

Volume 2, Issue 1


Published
on

January 1, 2021


Pages

1-9


DOI

Article

Egyptian Monazite Digestion by Sulphuric Acid Process; Separation of Thorium

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Authors

O. Helaly Affiliation:
Inorganic Chemistry Department, Nuclear Material Authority, Cairo, Egypt
, N. Abdelmonem Affiliation:
Chemical Engineering Department, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
, K. Abd El-Baky Affiliation:
Inorganic Chemistry Department, Nuclear Material Authority, Cairo, Egypt
, M. Nogami Affiliation:
Department of Electric and Electronic Engineering, Kindai University, Japan
and I. Ismail* Affiliation:
Chemical Engineering Department, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt; Renewable Energy Engineering Program, Zewail City of Science and Technology, 6th of October City, Giza 12578, Egypt


Abstract

The major factors that affect the digestion the monazite mineral obtained from the Egyptian black sand deposits on Rosetta area and the along Mediterranean coast using sulfuric acid were investigated experimentally. The results reveal that digestion temperature of 220 °C, acid/monazite ratio of 1.6/1, digestion time of 2.5 hrs and acid concentration of 93% verifies the maximum digestion efficiency for the studied monazite sand, which reached to 93.7%. Precipitation of thorium, rare earths and uranium from the filtrate sulfate solution was carried out using ammonium hydroxide, as a neutralizing agent. The precipitation efficiency of thorium at pH 1.1 was 99.1 % with only 1% of the rare earths co-precipitated. Further precipitation of uranium at pH of 6.5 verifies almost complete precipitation.


Keywords

Monazite, Digestion, Sulphuric acid, Thorium, Rare earths, Uranium


Citation

Helaly, O., Abdelmonem, N., Abd El-Baky, K., Nogami, M., & Ismail, I. (2021). Egyptian monazite digestion by sulphuric acid process; separation of thorium. Water, Energy, Food and Environment, 2(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.18576/wefej/020101

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