Extraction of Thorium Oxide (ThO₂) from Malaysian Monazite through Alkali Digestion: Physical and Chemical Characterization Using X-Ray Analysis

Abstract

Extraction of thorium oxide (ThO2) from monazite mineral specifically from Perak, Malaysia become a bright opportunity for the new income generation in Malaysia eventhough it is involved complex processing routes and require variety of chemicals. Monazite that is known as monazite-(Ce)-PO4 minerals, not just contain thorium, but it also consist rare earth elements (REE) such as cerium (Ce), neodymium (Nd), lanthanum (La) and gadolinium (Gd) and also associated with thorium (Th) and uranium (U) at about 7 wt% and 0.2 wt% respectively. One of the challenges in this R&D work is to determine the presence of thorium, uranium and REE at each processing step due to its similarities of chemical composition and physical properties. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to use several x-ray characterization techniques to identify elemental composition obtained at each processing route to show the evidence of the presence of ThO2 extracted from Malaysia monazite. This paper focused on the use of wavelength dispersive x-ray fluorescence (WDXRF), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) with energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrometer to show evidence of ThO2 formation. Result shows that the final product contain of 85 wt% of ThO2 and it is thorianite with nanorod morphology. Thus, conforming that the feasibility of the current processing route to produce ThO2 from Malaysia monazite.