Loading Behaviours of Nickel, Cobalt and Scandium on Different Types of Resin

Importance of laterite nickel ores are increasing day by day because of their nickel, cobalt and scandium contents. Processing operations of laterite ores generally consist of scrubbing, high pressure acid leaching, solution purification, ion exchange chromatography, solvent extraction, precipitation, etc. Due to the high cost of processing operations; maximum amounts of nickel, cobalt and scandium extraction and recovery are essential. Thus, the use of ion exchange resins is crucial for the recovery of especially scandium from the pregnant leach solution (PLS) of lateritic nickel ores. The objective of this study was determining the loading behaviours of Nickel (Ni2+), Cobalt (Co3+) and Scandium (Sc3+) as a rare earth element on different resins from a pregnant leach solution which contained Nickel (Ni2+), Cobalt (Co2+), Scandium (Sc3+), Manganese (Mn2+), Ferric Iron (Fe3+), Silica (Si4+) and Aluminium (Al3+). Through ion exchange chromatography, the selective loading of scandium, nickel and cobalt on ion exchange resins was targeted