On the recovery of uranium and thorium from Egyptian monazite

The beach Black sand deposits in Egypt usually contain about 15% heavy economic minerals, namely; ilmenite, rutile, magnetite, zircon, and monazite. The relative frequency of monazite in the beach deposits in some samples collected from Demietta and Rossetta on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt attain between 0.3 and 1.5 %. It has been estimated that the reserve of heavy economic minerals is about 30 million metric tons in the top meter and about 615 metric tons on the top twenty meters. Analysis of the separated monazite from these minerals (97%), showed that it contains 5.9% ThO2, 0.44% U3O8, 26.55% CeO3 and 34.35% other lanthanide oxides. Two approaches have been carried out to recover uranium, thorium and lanthanide elements from monazite. The first is based on alkaline leaching and the second is based on acid leaching. Two different flow sheets were developed compared and discussed. (authors)