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PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THE POSSIBILITIES OF CONCENTRATING THE RARE EARTH METALS BY FLOTATION FROM THE POWER PLANT ASHES

Krzysztof Wierzchowski, Joanna Calus Moszko, Barbara Bialecka

Abstract

The search for prospective sources of rare earth metals (REM) is one of the most important problems of the EU economy. Currently, it is believed that the source of REM may be deposits of coals or by-products of their combustion. A particularly promising appear to be fly ash from the combustion of coal because of much higher concentration of REM than in the coal beds. These facts and the dependency of domestic power energy on coal was an impulse to undertake work to determine the feasibility of obtaining the REM from power plant fly ash. The article presents the results of laboratory tests on determining conditions and possibility of initial concentration of REM from fly ash by foam flotation. Flotation is one of the physico-chemical methods of concentrating useful components from finely divided materials. As flotation reagents there were used authorпїЅs mixtures of substances that are polar in nature. Products of flotation were taken into solution by dissolution in acid. REM content in flotation products were determined by ICP-MS method. One found variation of the content of REM elements in the flotation products, depending on the reagent used and the preparation of the sample for enrichment. The findings may be a contribution to the search for more effective and efficient reagents to concentrate REM from the ashes by flotation.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017/11/s04.124

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