TITANIUM RECOVERY FROM Ti-BEARING MINERALS IN ORE DEPOSIT AND MINE TAILINGS
Master’s Dissertation
| dc.contributor.author | Beverley Andile Marufu | en_ZA |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-09-09T12:19:17Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | en_ZA |
| dc.description | Titanium (Ti) is a valuable element that is difficult to extract from its minerals, whether high-grade ores rich in rutile and ilmenite or from low-grade ores and tailings. Simplifying the extraction of vanadium from low-grade sources, such as tailings and vanadium-bearing titanium minerals, which are primarily available in South Africa, would be of economic interest to the mining industry. This research focused on recovering titanium from ore deposits and mine tailings through scalable chemical leaching methods. Both ore and tailing samples were characterised using XRD, SEM-EDS, and XRF to identify the minerals present and semi-quantitatively analyse their Ti content, revealing the presence of silicates and oxides in the vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite (VBT) and oxides only in the vanadium tailings. Sequential extraction was also performed on the samples. The study identified lithium metaborate flux fusion as the most effective dissolution method, surpassing sodium sulphate and ammonium sulphate. H2SO4 was the most effective leaching acid compared to HNO3, HCl, H3PO4, NaOH, and NH4OH. Aqua regia was also effective. However, it had high coextraction of impurities. Physical separation using magnetic separation and density separation was performed, and the subsamples were also characterised using the same non-destructive methods as the ore and tailings. The vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite ore was found to be very magnetic, while the tailings were nonmagnetic. Magnetic separation revealed high magnetite content in the ore, while tailings contained non-magnetic and weakly magnetic ilmenite, hematite and pseudobrookite minerals. LiBO2 flux fusion showed that the VBT ore contained 3.0 % Ti while the tailings contained 5.2 % Ti. Roasting using NaOH and NaHCO3 and adding oxidising (H2O2) and reducing agents showed no significant improvement in leaching efficiency for Ti, deeming the extra step unnecessary. Optimal leaching conditions were identified as 7 M H2SO4 at 90 °C, 600 rpm for 5 hours, achieving a selective leaching efficiency of 95.6 % and 85.5 % for Ti for the VBT ore and tailings, respectively, alongside minimised recovery percentages for vanadium (V) and iron (Fe). The concentration of Ti in the final leach liquor of the ore and the tailings was 2.8 % and 4.3 % respectively. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11660/13386 | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.title | TITANIUM RECOVERY FROM Ti-BEARING MINERALS IN ORE DEPOSIT AND MINE TAILINGS | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Dissertation |
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