Recovery of yttrium from deep-sea mud

Deep-sea mud rich in rare earth yttrium has received lots of attention from the international community as a new resource for Y. A novel process, which mainly includes acid leaching, solvent extraction, and oxalic acid precipitation-roasting, is proposed for recovery of Y from deep-sea mud. A series of experiments were conducted to inspect the impacts of various factors during the process and the optimum conditions were determined. The results show that the Y of deep-sea mud totally exists in apatite minerals which can be decomposed by hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid solution. The highest leaching efficiency of Y is 94.53% using hydrochloric acid and 84.38% using sulfuric acid under the conditions of H^＋concentration 2.0 mol/L, leaching time 60 min, liquid-solid ratio 4：1 and room temperature 25 ℃（only in case of sulfuric acid, when using hydrochloric acid, the leaching temperature should be 60 ℃）. Because of the much lower leaching temperature, sulfuric acid leaching is preferred. The counter current extraction and stripping tests were simulated by a cascade centrifugal extraction tank device. Using 10 vol% P204,15 vol% TBP and 75 vol% sulfonated kerosene as extractant, 98.79% Y^3＋ and 42.60% Fe^3＋ are extracted from sulfuric acid leaching liquor（adjusted to pH = 2.0） after seven-stage counter current extraction with O/A ratio of 1：1 at room temperature, while other metals ions such as Al^3＋, Ca^2＋, Mg^2＋and Mn^2＋ are almost not extracted. The Y^3＋ in loaded organic can be selectively stripped using 50 g/L sulfuric acid solution and the stripping efficiency reaches 99.86% after seven-stage counter current stripping with O/A ratio of 10：1 at room temperature, while only 2.26% co-extracted Fe^3＋ is stripped. The Y^3＋ of loaded strip liquor can be precipitated by oxalic acid to further separate Y^3＋ and Fe^3＋. The precipitation efficiency of Y^3＋ in loaded strip liquor can be 98.56% while Fe^3＋ is not precipitated under the conditions of oxalic acid solution concentration 200 g/L, quality ratio of oxalic acid to Y of 2, and precipitation time 0.5 h. And the precipitate was roasted at 850 ℃ for 3 h to obtain the oxide of Y in which the purity of Y_2 O_3/REO is 79.02% and the contents of major non-rare earth impurities are less than 0.21%.Over the whole process included acid leaching, solvent extraction, and oxalic acid precipitation-roasting,the yttrium yield is 82.04%.

Geochemical characteristics and metal element enrichment in crusts from seamounts of the Western Pacific

Elemental geochemistry is an essential part of understanding mineralization mechanisms. In this paper, a data set of 544 cobalt crust samples from seamounts of the Western Pacific are used to study the enrichment characteristics of metal elements. REE normalization is utilized to reveal the origin of the crusts; effects of water depth on Co enrichment and impacts ofphosphatization on mineral quality are discussed to obtain the evolution of these marine mineral deposits, which gives support to further resource assessment. Conclusions are reached as follows： 1） Elemental abundances, inter-element relation- ships, and shale-normalized REE patterns for phosphate- poor crusts from different locations reflect hydrogenetic origin of the crusts. EFs （enrichment coefficients） of REE exhibit exponential increase from surface sediments to phosphorite to polymetallic nodules to crusts, suggesting that the improved degree of hydrogeneous origin induces the enrichment of REE. 2） The crusts in the Western Pacific, formed through hotspot produced guyots trails, have relatively lower REE than those in the Mid-Pacific. The latter could be attributed to the peculiar submarine topography of seamounts formed by intraplate volcanism. 3） The non-phosphatized younger crust layers have 40% higher Co than the phosphatized older layers. This indicates the modification of the elemental composition in these crusts by phosphatization. A general depletion of hydroxide-dominated elements such as Co, Ni, and Mn and enrichment of P, Ca, Ba, and Sr is evident in phosphatized crusts, whereas non-phosphatized younger generation crusts are rich in terrigenous aluminosilicate detrital matter. 4） Co increases above the carbonate compensation depth （CCD） from less than 0.53% to over 0.65% in seamount regions with water depth of less than 2,500 m, suggesting the significance of the dissolution of carbonate in the sea water column to the growth and composition of crusts.