Minerals (Apr 2021)

Extraction of REEs (Ce, Tb, Y, Eu) from Phosphors Waste by a Combined Alkali Roasting–Acid Leaching Process

  • Bing-Xuan He,
  • Yong Liang,
  • Lue-Wei Xu,
  • Long-Bin Shao,
  • De-Gang Liu,
  • Fei Yang,
  • Guan-Jie Liang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/min11040437
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 4
p. 437

Abstract

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Rare Earth (RE) phosphors waste contains valuable rare Earth elements (REEs), such as cerium, terbium, yttrium, and europium. In industry, the process of NaOH roasting followed by acid leaching is usually used to extract the REEs from the waste in China. Using this process, the leaching efficiencies of cerium and terbium are clearly lower than those of other REEs, which results in uneven extraction of REEs in the waste and low total REE leaching efficiency. The key reason is that the trivalent cerium and terbium in the waste are oxidized into RE oxides during NaOH roasting, which are difficult to dissolve in acid solution. To solve this problem, an optimized process of controlling the oxygen concentration during NaOH roasting is proposed in this paper. The influences of the oxygen concentration, roasting temperature, roasting time, mass ratio of waste phosphor to NaOH, HCl solution concentration, acid leaching temperature, acid leaching time, and liquid–solid ratio on the REE leaching efficiency were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, the leaching efficiencies of cerium and terbium increased dramatically and the total REE leaching efficiency is 99.11%.

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