Recovery of Some Valuable Elements from Highly Ferruginous Shale, Um Bogma Formation, Wadi Um Hamed, South Western Sinai, Egypt.

Radwan, H. A.; Faheim, A. A.; El-Sheikh, E. M.; Abd El-Wahab, Z. H.; Gado, M. A.

doi:10.21608/tims.2021.191718

Recovery of Some Valuable Elements from Highly Ferruginous Shale, Um Bogma Formation, Wadi Um Hamed, South Western Sinai, Egypt.

Document Type : Original research papers

Authors

¹ Geology of isotopes, Nuclear Materials Authority, Cairo, Egypt.

² Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University (Girls), Youssif Abbas St., Nasr-City, Cairo, Egypt, P.O. Box 11754.

10.21608/tims.2021.191718

Abstract

The present work describes a study of the acidic pug leaching technique for U- extraction in addition to some associated valuable metals from a collected technological sample of ferruginous shale from Wadi Um Hamed of Um Bogma Formation at Abu Thor locality of southwestern Sinai, Egypt. A representative sample of the ore material was found to assay 900, 700 and 400 ppm of REEs, U and Cu, respectively in addition to some major and minor oxides. Numerous steps were perform upon the studied sample to process parametric studies like sulfuric acid concentration (50-150 kg/ton), curing time (0.5-5.0 h) and curing temperature (50-150°C) in order to assess the best one giving the optimum conditions. Under the optimal conditions (150 kg/ton sulfuric acid for 4.0 h at 150°C), the first step involved Fe-removal as hydroxide from the pregnant leaching solution using pH adjustment method followed by U- recovery through sorption / desorption and precipitation steps with the help of Amberlite IRA-400-Cl (strongly basic anion exchange resin) via column method. In the third step, REEs- recovery from U- free effluent was investigated using oxalic acid precipitation process while Cu- recovery by precipitation as hydroxide with ammonia solution was tack place.

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