Recovery of Vanadium from Qarah-aghaj Titanomagnetite ore by Roasting and Leaching

Titanomagnetites are one of the most important resources for recovery of vanadium. Qara-aghaj hard rock titanium ore locating 36 Km far from Euromieh north-west of Iran, is one of these resources. Based on presented flowsheet for production of ilmenite concentrate, a by-product as magnetite concentrate containing 0.84% V2O5 is produced. Mineralogical studies performed by XRD, XRF, and SEM and analyzing by EDX indicated that Fe3+ has been partially replaced by V3+ in magnetite lattices. Extraction of vanadium from magnetite concentrate consisting of salt roasting, leaching and precipitation was investigated. The effective parameters on roasting such as percentage of sodium carbonate, concentrate particle size, roasting temperature and roasting time were studied and the optimum amount of these parameters were determined as 16 wt%, d80= 75 mµ, 1100 °C and 2 hours, respectively. The leaching parameters such as roasted magnetite particle size, temperature and time were also investigated and the optimum amount of them were obtained as d80= 105 mµ, 90°C and 1 hour, respectively.