Potential Uranium Recovery by Percolation Leaching from El Missikat Mineralized Silica Vein, Eastern Desert, Egypt"
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Academia Journal of Environmetal Science 8(5): 071-080, May 2020 DOI: 10.15413/ajes.2020.0701 ISSN: ISSN 2315-778X ©2020 Academia Publishing Research Paper "Potential uranium recovery by percolation leaching from El Missikat mineralized silica vein, Eastern Desert, Egypt" Accepted 7th May, 2020 ABSTRACT El-Missikat area is one of the most important uranium occurrences in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Uranium occurrences are indeed strongly associated with silicified and fracture shear zones. It is characterized by the presence of galena, pyrite, uranophane, kasolite, wulvenite and colombite. Agitation and column percolation leaching techniques applied upon the uranium rich mineralization (El Missikat) showed that these techniques succeeded in providing considerable results. It can be concluded that El Missikat uranium mineralized ore is feasible for Nagar, M. S.*, Kamal, H. M., Abd El monsif, M., and Ghazala, R. A. leaching (column percolation) as about 140 kg ore sample assayed 1850 mgU//kg, after 75% leaching efficiency using 24 g/kg acid consumption in 40 days of work. Nuclear Materials Authority, P. O. Ion exchange technique was used to recover uranium from pregnant uranium Box. 530, Maady, Cairo, Egypt. solution, which gave 83% and 96% loading and elution efficiency, respectively. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Key words: El Missikat, Uranium, Agitation, Percolation, Recovery. INTRODUCTION El-Missikat area represents one of the most important zone has three types of silica veins. The most important one uranium occurrences in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. It lies is the jasper vein (red silica) which has all the at a distance of about three kilometers to the south of mineralization in El Missikat area as compared with the landmark Km.85 on the Qena-Safaga asphaltic road. El- other two types (white and black silica). Missikat pluton is an oval shaped pluton (covering an area According to authors (Bakhit, 1978; Bakhit et al., 1985), of about 75 km2), with its maximum length of 12.5 km the black silica veins are occupied by secondary uranium trending NW (Abu Deif and El-Tahir, 2008; Omar, 2010; minerals besides fluorite, galena, pyrite, chalcopyrite and Arafa and Omar, 2011; Omar et al., 2012). molybdenite minerals as well as jasper. Silica veins were From the field observation, El-missikat area is occupied subjected to an upgrading procedure followed by analysis by older granitoid, younger granites, and dykes and veins. of the separated fractions and revealed that the separated The younger granite in El-Missikat area is the most accessory mineral assemblage can be classified into four important rock hosting the U-mineralized silica veins heavy mineral groups as follows (Mohamed, 1995): (Figure 1) (Ghoneim and Abdel Gawad, 2018). Uranium occurrences in El Missikat younger granite are • Radioactive minerals: uranophane, uraninite and indeed strongly associated with silicified and fracture shear pitchblende zones which extend in the Northern peripheral parts. This • Sulphide minerals: galena and pyrite shear zone is thus filled with siliceous material which • Transparent minerals: fluorite, zircon and monazite belongs to three generations of silica veins (white, black • Iron and titanium oxides: magnetite, hematite, rutile and and red) in El Missikat area (Abu Dief, 1992). sphene On the other hands, all mineralizations in El Missikat area are related to the main shear zone (Figure 2).This shear Studies on uraniferous iron grains were performed at Gabal Academia Journal of Environmental Science; Nagar et al. 072 Figure 1: Geological map of El-Missikat area. Figure 2: Shear zone with Jasperoid vein in El-Missikat area. Gattar, El Missikat and El Erediya granites in Eastern Desert (Bhargava et al., 2015). Acid leaching is highly selective, of Egypt. The results showed that their weight abundances and uranium recovery range from 70 to 90% is possible. are up to 17.50, 18.00 and 26.00% of the total accessory The leaching behavior of uranium from a low-grade heavy minerals of the uranium-mineralized samples of the unconformity-related uranium ore assaying 0.06% three plutons, respectively (Raslan, 2009). occurring in the northwestern part of the Kadapa basin in Two alteration facies namely propylitic and advanced southern India was studied (Sreenivas and Padmanabhan, argillic zones which reflect the presence of hydrothermal 2012). deposits were determined. The propylitic facies contains In this regard, it is interesting to mention that the results quartz, fluorite, and Fe-oxides. It is characterized by the of acid agitation leaching efficiency attained about 91% presence of galena, pyrite, uranophane, kasolite, wulvenite after 8 h of agitation from El Missikat mineralization and colombite, whereas the advanced argillic facies is (Mohamed, 1995). Recovery of uranium and REE from El characterized by the presence of galena, pyrite, gold, barite, Missikat pluton and the results indicated that uranium celestine, magnetite, hematite, and goethite (El-Sherif, leaching efficiency 95% (Mousa et al., 2014). Under the 2010). optimum agitation leaching conditions, uranium leaching Acid leaching has been applied mainly in large operations efficiency attained about 95% from El Missikat mineralized Academia Journal of Environmental Science; Nagar et al. 073 shear zone (Amin et al., 2017). The recovery of uranium veins by Nuclear Material Authority (NMA), Egypt having from El-Missikat by anion exchange resin (Lewatit Mono the chemical composition of 0.0130% ΣREE, 0.185% U, Plus M500) was investigated and extraction condition 3.4%Al2O3, 89.97% SiO2, 0.55% CaO, 2.95% Fe2O3 and contact time, temperature, pregnant feed pH, resin/ leach 0.11% TiO2. While some of the trace elements of the same liquor ratio and agitation rate were studied (Gawad, 2015). vein sample after (Amin et al., 2017) revealed the presence Uranium recovery was performed using ion exchange resin of U (3030 ppm), Zr (1070 ppm), V (35 ppm), Co (10 ppm) technique using D263B anion exchange type. After and ΣREE (100 ppm). adsorption and elution process, uranium was precipitated using sodium hydroxide solution at pH 7.5 where 0.27 gm of sodium di-uranate (Yellow Cake) was obtained (Amin et Uranium leaching procedures al., 2017). Percolation leaching of uranium has been studied on Granulometric analysis Eastern Desert, Egypt mineralization, from these studies, the authors performed a column percolation leaching study This type of analysis was performed upon 1.0 Kg of the to recover uranium from El-Sela mineralization using study sample where it was subjected to crushing and sulfuric acid in which, uranium leaching efficiency attained sieving along with a range of sizes from - 1.25 to - 0.25 mm. about 81.03% (Nagar et al., 2016). Uranium percolation After that, all fractions of grain size were analyzed for leaching from both Gattar-II and Gattar-V mineralized uranium determination. samples was studied. From the results obtained, they notice that the particle size has a significant impact on the leaching efficiency. Regarding GII, the leaching efficiency Agitation leaching (based on the solution) of –10 mm sample is 76.9%, but the leaching efficiency of –40 mm sample is 47.4% (Mahmoud To study and determine the optimizing factors affecting the et al., 2001). Percolation Leaching of uranium from Abu- acid agitation leaching of uranium, different series of Rusheid Mylonite Eastern Desert, Egypt was studied. The agitation leaching experiments were performed after results indicated that the percolation leaching efficiency selecting the appropriate. Certain weight of the uranium attained about 65% (Mahmoud et al., 2017). mineralization, ground to appropriate size, was mixed well Agitation leaching always leads to better solubilisation with a suitable volume of different sulfuric acid efficiencies for metals, but requires a large investment in concentrations. The studied factors are, grain size, uranium reactor maintenance and energy for the implementation of distribution, agitation time, and sulphuric acid agitation compared to percolation leaching (Ghorbani et al., concentration. 2016; Oxley et al., 2016; Staden et al., 2017). As far as percolation leaching is concerned, it has the advantages of having a low investment cost required for the Percolation (column) leaching experiment implementation of the leaching operations and a relatively low operating cost. In addition, percolation leaching is Recommended columns materials are PVC pipe with 12- typically conducted at a coarser size fraction than agitated inch inside diameter. The bottom of the column is equipped tank leaching, thus reducing the power requirement and with a PVC base plate containing a piece of screen to reagent consumption. prevent loss of solid sample from the column during This study aims to evaluate the leachability and recovery leaching. Optionally, 2 to 4 mm of clean silica sand and of uranium from El missikat mineralized silica vein by gravel can be loaded into the base of the columns before applying agitation and column percolation leaching sample addition. The columns charged with the mineralized techniques and obtain its end product precipitate, sodium samples in which average uranium content is 0.185%. The di-uranate (yellow cake). Relevant technical and base plate is equipped with a valve to control the discharge economical parameters are gotten through the laboratory of column effluent. A funnel and suitable 30-L receptacle study. These parameters can be used to guide the design of were placed