Physical beneficiation and recovery of rare earth elements from microgranites of Gudanal area, Siwana Ring Complex, Rajasthan, India

This paper describes the physical beneficiation and recovery of rare earth elements (REE) from Gudanal area, Siwana Ring Complex (SRC), Barmer district, Rajasthan. The feed samples of microgranite from Gudanal area contain REE 17200 ppm, LREE (La – Gd) 14600 ppm, HREE (Tb - Lu) 2590 ppm with La 2531 ppm, Ce 5785, Nd 3465, Y 5886 ppm and Nb 790 ppm. Laboratory investigations such as size analysis, heavy media separation, wet tabling and magnetic separation at various field strengths of 7,10 and 14 kilogauss were carried out to recover REE, Y and Nb mineral concentrates. The gravity concentration studies show that the -60# size heavy mineral concentrate fraction at 20.2% by weight assays 41900 ppm Total REE, 13000 ppm Y and 1600 ppm Nb with recoveries of 55%, 50% and 37% respectively. The bromo light product has indicated 79.8% by weight analysing 0.89% TREE, 0.33%Y and 0.06% Nb. The magnetic separation studies on -60# feed samples shows separation of 1.1% by weight of 14 kilogauss non-magnetic methylene iodide heavies analysed Total REE 16.95%, Y 1.99%, with a distribution of 11.29% and 4.15% respectively. In this product, Lanthanum (La), Cerium (Ce), Neodymium (Nd) and Yttrium (Y) individually assayed 46000 ppm, 70300 ppm, 27300 ppm and 19900 ppm with an enrichment factor of 18.1, 12.1, 7.7 and 3.4 respectively. The above studies are aimed to develop a flowsheet to separate REE minerals from the microgranites of Gudanal area, SRC, Rajasthan.