Recovery of Some Valuable Elements from Highly Ferruginous Shale, Um Bogma Formation, Wadi Um Hamed, South Western Sinai, Egypt.

The present work describes a study of the acidic pug leaching technique for Uextraction in addition to some associated valuable metals from a collected technological sample of ferruginous shale from Wadi Um Hamed of Um Bogma Formation at Abu Thor locality of southwestern Sinai, Egypt. A representative sample of the ore material was found to assay 900, 700 and 400 ppm of REEs, U and Cu, respectively in addition to some major and minor oxides. Numerous steps were perform upon the studied sample to process parametric studies like sulfuric acid concentration (50-150 kg/ton), curing time (0.5-5.0 h) and curing temperature (50150°C) in order to assess the best one giving the optimum conditions. Under the optimal conditions (150 kg/ton sulfuric acid for 4.0 h at 150°C), the first step involved Fe-removal as hydroxide from the pregnant leaching solution using pH adjustment method followed by Urecovery through sorption / desorption and precipitation steps with the help of Amberlite IRA400-Cl (strongly basic anion exchange resin) via column method. In the third step, REEsrecovery from Ufree effluent was investigated using oxalic acid precipitation process while Curecovery by precipitation as hydroxide with ammonia solution was tack place.