Baking process of mineral carrier of rare earth metals with sodium hydroxide using muffle furnace

Rare Earth Elements (REE) is one of the natural resources that are very strategic and high economic value. REE applications in industry are continues to grow such as LCD (liquid crystal display), LED (light emitting diode), magnet and hybrid batteries (NiMH batteries; Misch metal; Ce, La, Nd). This resulted in REE demand continues to increase up to 10%. Increased demand is not matched by the number of Rare Earth production in the world. This happens because the Chinese as the main actor in the producer REE world production (95%) restricting the export of Rare Earth up to 35% so that the world price of LTJ bounced up. Research & development processing, and purification REE continue to obtain high purity Rare Earth Metals. Baking process the mineral carrier of REE (raw material minerals) with solid NaOH using a muffle furnace has been carried out. The research aims to determine the effect of temperature and grain size of the monazite sand on the decomposition reaction monazite sand and reaction kinetics. The raw materials used are monazite sands containing rare earth oxides as much as 55.1% and 11.01% phosphate. At monazite sand baking using solid NaOH will occur monazite sand decomposition process and the release of the existing phosphate. The results showed that the optimal conditions baking process at a temperature of 400°C and 200 mesh particle size obtained 91.40% phosphate inseparable.