Monazite Mineral Processing

Monazite is one of the important phospate mineral containing rare earth elements and thorium. Monazite has high abundance of cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, gadolinium along with thorium. Most of these rare earth elements are used in making hi-tech advanced military electronic devices, communications, information and transportation systems, space and nuclear energy, medical and surgical equipments, and wind turbine energy mills. This book chapter discusses the processes relating to mining and physical beneficiation of monazite mineral to generate monazite concentrate from its ore and beach sand resources. Processing of monazite concentrate by pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical routes to recover mixed rare earth oxide salts