Leaching of Rare Earths from Eudialyte Minerals

Abstract

The (a) sulfuric and (b) citric acid leaching of rare earths from two differently textured eudialyte minerals were investigated through leaching tests conducted using Taguchi and fractional factorial design of experiments. Results of the leaching studies showed that the use of novel method of citric acid yielded comparable leaching recoveries of 70-80 % to conventional sulfuric acid method on direct leaching of large-grained eudialyte. Fine-grained eudialyte required rigorous conditions for rare earths leaching.