Comparison of economical and technical indices on rare earth separation processes of bastnasite by solvent extraction

According to the composition of rare earth ores and the market, several feasible separation processes of bastnasite in Baotou of Inner Mongolia and Mianning of Sichuan by solvent extraction in HEH(EHP)-HCl system were presented. The parameters of the processes such as stage numbers, volume of mixer-settler, fixed investment of extractant and rare earths, consumption of chemical reagents including HCl and NH3 were calculated and compared. The results show that the novel scheme can save cost more than 20% compared with those of others. By the economical analysis, the optimized separation process of bastnasite was obtained, which can be applied to the treatment of monazite too.