Rare earth minerals mainly exist in the crust in the form of minerals, and there are mainly three kinds of rare earth minerals. These minerals are usually called rare earth minerals, such as monazite and fluorocarbon. As an impurity element in minerals, it is dispersed in rock-forming minerals and rare metal minerals in the form of homogeneous metasomatism.
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There are two smelting methods for rare earth ores, namely, hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy.
Hydrometallurgy belongs to chemical metallurgy, and the whole process is mostly carried out in solution and solvent. For example, the decomposition of rare earth concentrate, the separation and extraction of rare earth oxides, rare earth compounds and single rare earth metal are all chemical separation processes such as precipitation, crystallization, redox, solvent extraction and ion exchange.
Pyrometallurgy has simple process and high productivity. Rare earth pyrometallurgy mainly includes preparation of rare earth alloy by silicothermic reduction, preparation of rare earth metal or alloy by molten salt electrolysis and preparation of rare earth alloy by metal thermal reduction. The common feature of pyrometallurgy is that it is produced at high temperature.
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