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

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 Urecovery 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, REEsrecovery from U-free effluent was investigated using oxalic acid precipitation process while Cu-recovery by precipitation as hydroxide with ammonia solution was tack place.