Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
Materials Today: Proceedings 9 (2019) 578–586 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings
2214-7853© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Green Methods for Separation,
Purification and Nanomaterial Synthesis, GMSP&NS’18, 24–25th April 2018, Centre for Nano and Material Sciences, Jain University, Bangalore
562112, Karnataka, India.
GMSP&NS’18
Process for Scandium Recovery from Jamaican Bauxite Residue: A
Probabilistic Economic Assessment
Remya P. Narayanan
a,b,
*, Nikolaos K. Kazantzis
c
, Marion H. Emmert
b
a
Department of Chemistry,Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Kumaraswamy layout,
Bangalore, 560078,India
b
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry & Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road,
Worcester, MA, 01609, USA
c
Department of Chemical Engineering & Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road,
Worcester, MA, 01609, USA
Abstract
Scandium is one of the most important elements among lanthanides because of its promising applications in solid
oxide fuel cells and high strength Al- Sc alloys. There are no primary mine sources for Scandium and the present
supply is from stock piles and byproducts. Scarcity of reliable supply and high production costs hinders the use of
Scandium in high end technologies. In this report, we discuss the development of a recovery process for scandium
from the red mud. A recovery process based on roasting, leaching and selective precipitation is designed from
available literature and optimized by lab scale experiments. A detailed economic analysis of the process using
Monte Carlo simulations is presented. Uncertainties associated with the operating conditions like commodity prices,
market etcis accounted for in this approach. The analysis shows that the developed process is profitable even at the
lowest historical price of Sc
2
O
3.
The cumulative NPV cost profiles generated correlating the historical prices of
different purity Sc
2
O
3
(99 -99.99%) also were positive indicating that the developed process has a large scope in
terms of commercial feasibility.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Green Methods for Separation,
Purification and Nanomaterial Synthesis, GMSP&NS’18, 24–25th April 2018, Centre for Nano and Material Sciences, Jain University, Bangalore
562112, Karnataka, India.
Keywords:Bauxite residue; Red mud; Scandium; Rare earth recovery; Leaching; Solvent extraction; Monte Carlo Simulation
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 99020 83537; Fax:+91-80-26660789
E-mail address:pnremya@gmail.com