Recovery of vanadium from Liganga Titaniferous ore using Lake Natron soda ASH

The extraction of vanadium from titaniferous magnetite oreas of Liganga using LakeNatron soda ash (trona) has been studied.Roasting of the fine ground raw ore with trona in silica and platinum crucibles was done in electric furnace at temperatures 900oC, 1000oc and 1100oc. This was carried out parallel with technical soda (Na2Co3) using the same type of crucibles. Cold calcines were leached with hot water to recover the soluble sodium vanadate formed from the roast.Parameters thought to effect amount to vanadium recovered from the ore such as amount of soda (both trona and technical grade Na2Co3), roasting temperatures and oxidizing conditions were investigated.Maximum recovery (94.50%) of vanadium is obtained under concentration of trona of 20% (wt/wt) and roasting temperature of 1000oc under oxidizing conditions (under supply of oxygen with flow rate of 1.3m3hr-1) and this is attained by roasting the mixture for one hour.