Recovery of Rare Earth Elements from the Tailings Dam of Chador Melo Iron Ore Processing Plant

The tailings dam of the Chadormelo iron ore processing plant has rare earth elements and its identification operation was carried out in the first step. The results showed that the tailings dam is composed of major minerals such as hematite, quartz, fluorapatite, calcite, goethite, and dolomite so that about 84.75% by weight of this sample is iron oxides with 41.52% by weight, calcium and magnesium oxides with 17.74% by weight, quartz with 20.2% by weight, and aluminum oxides with 5.29% by weight respectively. The total grade of rare elements in the sample is 1068.57 ppm, of which 84.61% by weight are light rare elements and 15.39% by weight are heavy rare elements. The d80 of the sample is 46.35 microns. SEM studies showed that the minerals monazite, xenotim, and apatite in this sample contain rare elements and the monazite mineral is dispersed in the amount of iron and apatite in a few microns. The wet magnetic separation method was used as a pre-concentration method for iron removal and pre-concentration of rare elements, which due to the high grade of rare elements in the magnetic product (802 ppm) as a pre-concentration method for rare elements before the leaching operation Not used.