Separation of La/Ce in rare earth polishing powder waste via Two-Stage hydrochloric acid leaching and corresponding leaching mechanism

Rare earth polishing powder waste (REPPW) usually contains lanthanum (La) and cerium (Ce) with content over 50 %, thus its recovery is important for the cyclic utilization of rare earth. In the traditional acid leaching process, La and Ce are simultaneously leached and required further separation. Based on their leaching behavior difference, a two-stage hydrochloric acid leaching process was proposed in this study to recover and primarily separate La and Ce in REPPW. With the optimal operation conditions, La enriched solution with a relative purity of 91.11 % and Ce enriched solution with a relative purity of 92.85 % were obtained and their recovery ratio were 59.47 and 85.15 %, respectively. After precipitation and calcination, products of La2O3 with purity of 83.67 % and CeO2 with purity of 93.38 % were obtained. Besides, individual leaching kinetics of La and Ce in low-acid leaching were studied using various shrinking core models. Based on the analysis of phase components and micromorphology evolution of REPPW during the leaching process, the leaching mechanism of REPPW was determined. Combined the leaching regularity with the fitting results, the leaching process of La was controlled by interfacial transfer and product layer diffusion, and the Ce was by product layer diffusion. The apparent activation energies of the LaOF and CeO2 leaching reactions were 89.97 kJ/mol and 79.03 kJ/mol, respectively.