Uranium ores roasting

Australian Vanadium—Uranium Ore. A calcareous camotite ore at YeeHrrie, AustraHa, is iU-suited for salt roasting and acid leaching. Dissolution of vanadium and uranium by leaching in sodium carbonate solution at elevated temperature and pressure has been tested on a pilot-plant scale... 

More then 150 minerals containing uranium are known. Typically, however, uranium ores contain only about 0.1% uranium. In the commercial production of uranium metal, the ore is crushed, concentrated, roasted, and in most cases leached with sulfuric acid in the presence of an oxidizing agent such as manganese dioxide or chlorate ions to convert all of the uranium to uranyl sulfato complexes. Carbonate leaching is used to extract uranium from ores containing minerals such as calcite. The recovery of uranium... 

Fluidized bed reactors were first employed on a large scale for the catalytic cracking of petroleum fractions, but in recent years they have been employed for an increasingly large variety of reactions, both catalytic and non-catalytic. The catalytic reactions include the partial oxidation of naphthalene to phthalic anhydride and the formation of acrylonitrile from propylene, ammonia, and air. The noncatalytic applications include the roasting of ores and Tie fluorination of uranium oxide. 

Butler (B39) described the leaching of carnotite ores that contained high-vanadium-low-lime and low-vanadium-asphaltic-type minerals. The high-vanadium-low-lime ore (less than 2%) is roasted with 6-9 wt. % salt at 850°C and is immediately quenched in 3% hot sodium carbonate solution. The calcine is ground to 65 mesh and uranium and vanadium are dissolved by agitation leaching at 92-96°C. 93% of the uranium and 85% of the vanadium are extracted from the ore. The asphaltic tjq>e ore is roasted at 550°C and 80-85% of the uranium and 35-40% of the vanadium are extracted. The leach solution concentration was maintained between 7 and 9% sodium carbonate. The pulp density was between 45 and 50% solids. 

The mechanically dressed ore is first roasted in order to remove sulphur, arsenic, and other volatile ingredients, and then heated in a reverberatory furnace with sodium carbonate or sodium sulphate. The product is extracted with %varm dilute sulphuric acid, whereupon the uranium passes into solution, whilst the radium remains in the residue witlr calcium, barium, and lead. Tliis residue, which is the starting material for tlie extraction of radium, also contains silica and small quantities of copper, bismutli, arsenic, antimony, iron, aluminium, manganese, zinc, nickel, cobalt, thallium, vanadium, columbium, tantalum, and rare earths. 

It has recently been discovered that the roasting of carnotite ore at 850°C in the presence of a few per cent of calcium sulphate, prior to carbonate leaching, enhances both the vanadium and uranium extraction efficiencies. A convenient way of achieving the desired conditions is to blend the ore with another carnotite ore with a high natural calcium sulphate content, when available, rather than waste the beneficial effect of the latter by treating it alone. 

Roasting of zinc ore Production of uranium tetrachloride by chlorination... 

---