THE EFFECT OF PC88A SOLVENT EXTRACTION PARAMETERS AND ITS STRIPPING BEHAVIOR TO THE RECOVERY OF YTTRIUM

Abstract

Yttrium (Y) is one of the elements major in heavy rare earth elements (HREE) used in various industries such as metallurgy, steel, laser, electronics, optics, superconductors, magnets, color television (TV) tubes and others applications. In nature, the rare earth elements (REE) are associates in fairly multifaceted combination and because of chemical properties likeness and difficult to isolate REE into single elements. These could be the biggest hurdle in the recovery and extraction of yttrium from xenotime minerals. Therefore, solvent extraction of yttrium from chloride solution using organic extractant 2-ethylhexyl phosphonic acid mono-2-ethylhexyl ester (PC88A) diluted in kerosene and modified with isodecanol was investigated in this study. Based to a solvent extraction study, the best conditions for recovering yttrium using an organic combination consisting of 34% PC88A, 6% isodecanol, and 60% kerosene were 1.0 g of yttrium chloric hexahydrate in 0.2 M hydrochloric acid (HCl) with a ratio organic to aqueous of 1:3 and 30 minutes contact time. Additional research on the behavior of stripping was also differentiated and considered. It was discovered that nitride acid (HNO3) were more effective in yttrium stripping than HCl and sulfuric acids (H2SO4).