One step purification of impurities in the leachate of weathered crust elution-deposited rare earth ores

It is necessary to control and reduce the high content of Al3+, Cu2+ and Pb2+ ions in the leachate of weathered crust elution-deposited rare earth ore to facilitate the rare earth recovery and the quality of rare earth products. Neither NH4HCO3 nor Na2S are suitable for removal of all impurity ions and meanwhile maintain high rare earth recovery. Conventionally, NH4HCO3 is firstly adopted to remove Al3+, and then Cu2+ and Pb2+ are removed by using Na2S. This two steps purification process is quite long and results in lots of complication in operation. In this paper, a one-step purification by using the compound of NH4HCO3 and Na2S was proposed to remove Al3+, Cu2+ and Pb2+. The results showed that after purification 89% Cu, 92% Pb and 74% Al were removed from the leachate solution by using 0.1 M compound of NH4HCO3/Na2S, while maintaining 89% rare earth. The optimal purification parameters were: volume ratio of NH4HCO3 to Na2S of 9:1, volume ratio of compound to leachate of 0.05:1, precipitation time of 30 min.