Maboumine process: Example of a

promising process for developing a

polymetallic ore deposit

As a growing mining company, ERAMET is looking for new positions on the Florent Delvallée, Valérie Weigel
and Antoine Greco. ER A MET
strategic metals market, as ores are becoming increasingly complex to handle.
Research, France
In this context, the Gabonese Maboumine pyrochlore deposit is currently
being studied for the recovery of niobium, tantalum, rare earths and uranium.
This ore shows mineralogical and chemical characteristics that make it chal-
lenging to process by already known practices, from both technical and eco-
nomical points of view. Pyrochlores are in an advanced weathered state, as
well as very fine and entrapped into a goethite and crandalite matrix. Neverthe-
less recent improvements in niobium, tantalum and rare earth chemistries
in high ionic strength and hot aqueous media have been made. It has allowed
ERAMET Research to develop an innovative hydrometallurgical process, which
has been successfully operated at a pilot plant scale. The upstream part of the
process which aims to dissolve valuable elements consists in several steps. A
first one is dedicated to dissolve the ore matrix, leaving the pyrochlore un-
leached. A second step consists of chemically breaking down pyrochlores in
order to form soluble species of the valuable elements. Niobium and tantalum
on the one side, and rare earths and uranium on the other, are separated into
different flows. Finally each one feeds a specific section of the downstream
part of the process, which is dedicated to obtain commercial grade products,
such as ferro-niobium, rare earth and uranium concentrates.

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INTRODUCTION
ERAMET is a world leader in alloying metals and in high-quality metallurgy. The group employs
about 15,000 people in 20 countries, through their subsidiaries, like, for example COMILOG in
Gabon for manganese, Société Le Nickel in New-Caledonia for nickel and Aubert & Duval for
alloys in France. As a growing company, ERAMET has major research and development projects in
new business lines with high growth potential, such as titanium dioxide, zircon, lithium, as well as
recycling.
Niobium, and rare-earth elements have been listed by European Union and United States
authorities as critical metals from the point of view of supply and production. Indeed, almost 85%
of the world production of niobium is ensured by Brazil, and 95% of the rare-earths by China.
Niobium is mainly used in microalloyed steel production and rare-earth have a wide diversity of
applications as for example magnets for wind-turbines or hybrid cars, or optical applications for
LCD television.
In this context, the Gabonese Maboumine polymetallic deposit is currently being studied by
ERAMET. An innovative hydrometallurgical process has been developed for the recovery of
niobium, tantalum, rare earths and uranium.

METHODOLOGY
Maboumine process development involves around a hundred people worldwide, with laboratories
in France, Australia, Canada, the United States, South-Africa and Finland. Research for process
development is organized around ERAMET Research with a forty people team and follows a
several steps methodology, as described hereafter:
• Mineralogical study of the ore
• Laboratory test work to define the process steps and the related chemical and physical
conditions
• Pilot plant scale operation in order to validate the process in a continuous configuration
• Demonstration plant in order to validate technology options, and to provide data for the
scale up to the commercial plant
Today, the process has been entirely operated at pilot plant scale in France since the end of 2012. A
demonstration plant is planned for 2015. 4 patents have been written on the process.

MABOUMINE ORE
The deposit
The Maboumine deposit is located near the Mabounié River in the Gabonese rainforest. Geology of
the Maboumine ore body has been extensively studied by ERAMET recently and Bureau de
Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM) in the past after several drilling campaigns. The
vertical profile of the ore body can be represented by 3 layers. The top layer is the superficial and
ribonned one that is treated for the recovery of niobium, tantalum, rare-earth and uranium.

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Underneath lays a phosphate ore that can be mined out, for example to produce phosphoric acid.
These two upper layers result from the weathering of the carbonatite bottom layer.

Figure 1 Vertical profile of the deposit and map of Maboumine site with delimitation of the drilled area

The mean chemical composition of the deposit for the superficial and ribonned layer is given
hereunder in Table 1:

Table 1 Mean chemical composition of the superficial and ribonned layer of the deposit

Fe Al P Ti Mn Si Nb RE Th U Ta
35% 6,1% 2,7% 2,5% 2,4% 1,6% 1,2% 1,4% 0,10% 0,03% 0,03%

Valuable elements are rather diluted in the Maboumine ore, considering 1.2% niobium, 1.4% rare-
earth, 0.03% uranium and 0.03% tantalum. Among the on-going project of rare-earth mines
industry outside of China, Maboumine ore deposit can be considered as rich with heavy rare earth.
It is to mention that uranium and thorium are radioactive elements.

Mineralogy
Samples of the superficial and ribonned layer have been characterised over the past several years
using SEM, MLA or QEMSCAN, XRD and chemical analysis. It has shown that the ore consists in a
complex mixture of minerals, with iron bearing goethite and magnetite as well as calcium,
phosphate and aluminium bearing crandalite matrix. The ore contains a wide diversity of other
minerals such as the titanium bearing ilmenite and rutile or manganese bearing pyrolusite, as well
as the silica bearing quartz, etc. Most of the valuable elements, typically 70% to 80%, are hold by
pyrochlore minerals. This mineral, which is in an advanced weathered state, exists in several forms
in the Maboumine ore, with multiple texture and compositions. Indeed, pyrochlore can be

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represented as an A2B2O6(OH,F) formula with the A site as U, RE, Na, Ca or Th and the B site as Nb,
Ta, Ti or Fe.

Figure 2 SEM views of Pyrochlore grains from Mabounine ore with varying texture on the left hand-side, and
varying composition on the right-hand side

Particle size distribution study coupled with chemical analysis on samples of the ribonned and
superficial ore showed that it is very fine. Typical values obtained on a given sample exhibit that
the inferior to 10 µm size fraction contained 31% of the pyrochlore within 58% of the total mass
distribution, whereas the superior to 50 µm size fraction contained 36% of the pyrochlore within
17% of the total mass distribution. Even if liberated pyrochlore can be easily obtained by fine
grinding, traditional beneficiation techniques may be applicable only to the coarser material, but
there will be a need for novel beneficiation techniques to deal with the ultra-fine (e.g.
approximately <10 µm material). In any case, the diversity of pyrochlores compositions and surface
properties due to their advanced weathered state is making floatation very difficult.

PROCESS DEVELOPMENT
Classical routes for niobium production and application to the Maboumine ore

Pyrometallurgy process
Classical route for ferro-niobium production requires pyrochlore to be concentrated by mineral
processing involving floatation, prior to pyrometallurgical treatment (Gupta, 1994). Pyrochlore
concentrate requires then a dephophorization step which leads to obtain a phosphorous pig iron
and a niobium rich slag. The former is introduced to an aluminothermy step for the production of
ferro-niobium.

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 Ore Pyrochlore Ferro-niobium
Dephosphorization Aluminothermy
floatation Pyrochlore Niobium
concentrate rich slag

Tail Phosphorous Al2O3, CaO

pig iron slag

Figure 3 Pyrometallurgical route for production of ferro-niobium

Since only a small fraction of pyrochlores of the Maboumine ore can be concentrated by mineral
processing, classical route for ferro-niobium production is not economical for ERAMET. Moreover,
pyrometallurgical process does not allow recovering rare-earth and uranium which are lost in the
Al2O3-CaO slag.

Hydrometallurgy process
Niobium species are known for having poor solubilities in most of mineral acids, except
hydrofluoric acid, but forms soluble species with complexing agent such as oxalic acid or in very
basic media such as potash (R.J.H. Clark, D. Brown, 1973). The only known hydrometallurgical ore
treatment process for the recovery of niobium that has been industrialized so far is hydrofluoric
acid route (Polak). Actually it is rather a tantalum recovery route. It is illustrated by the scheme
below.

Nb stripping Nb
solution precipitation
HF/H2SO4

Spent
Ore TaF72-(aq) MIBK solution
Leaching
NbOF52-(aq) solvent extraction

Ta stripping Ta
solution precipitation

Figure 4 Hydrofluoric route for niobium-tantalum ore treatment

Hydrofluoric route consists in leaching niobium-tantalum ore by a mixture of hydrofluoric and

sulphuric acid. Niobium and tantalum are separated by a ketone based solvent extraction, and then
selectively striped one after the other from the loaded organic solution. Niobium and tantalum are
then precipitated form their respective streams and subsequently calcined in order to obtain high
purity oxides. The main disadvantage of this route is the use of hydrofluoric acid which is major
health safety and environment issue. Besides, it would not be an economical route to treat
Maboumine ore.

Maboumine process
Considering that classical pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical routes can not be applied to
Maboumine ore, alternative process has been developed by ERAMET Research. For informations

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protection reason, the process description will not be explicit. Nevertheless, it can be mentioned
that it is hydrofluoric acid free. The upstream part of the Maboumine process is dedicated to
dissolve valuable elements and consists in several steps that are explained downunder and
illustrated by Figure 5 below :
• Ore dressing and magnetic separation: After grinding and scrubbing steps, magnetic
separation enables to remove around 30% of the ore mass, mainly as magnetite. This
fraction does not contain valuable elements. The remaining fraction is called the non-mag
ore.
• Matrix leaching: the main purpose of this step is to leach goethite and crandalite matrix.
Pyrochlores remain unleached and are concentrated into solid that feeds the Pyrochlore
breakdown step. Since part of the valuable elements are not holds by pyrochlores, they
dissolved to a certain extend at this leaching step. This is the reason why, rare earth and
uranium solution from downstream step is recycled to the leaching. The solution exiting
this step is the rare-earth and uranium pregnant leach solution
• Pyrochlore Breakdown: Pyrochlores are among the least leachable minerals of the ore.
Therefore, they undergo a specific treatment in order to breakdown their structure and
form soluble species of the valuable elements.
• Valuable elements dissolution: This step allow all valuable elements to be dissolved and
produces a PLS that contains most of the niobium, tantalum and rare-earth. The solid
residue is mainly silica containing species.
• Nb/Ta precipitation: niobium and tantalum are recovered from PLS by precipitation as
impure concentrate.
Ore

Ore dressing Magnetic

Magnetic separation fraction

Non-mag
ore
Matrix Pyrochlore
Leaching Breakdown
RE & U PLS

Valuable Elements
Nb/Ta precipitation
Nb, Ta, dissolution
RE & U
PLS
Spent Nb/Ta Final residue
solution precipitate

Figure 5 Upstream part of the Maboumine

Niobium, rare-earth, tantalum and uranium dissolution yields in the upstream part of the process
reach about 80% respect to the ore at pilot plant scale. One particulartiy of the process is that
niobium and tantalum on the one side, and rare earths and uranium on the other side, are separated
into different streams. Each one of them feeds a specific section of the downstream part of the
process, which is dedicated to obtain commercial grade products, such as ferro-niobium, rare earth
concentrates and uranium concentrate.

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Challenges related to processing polymetallic ores
Modelling is an important aspect of process design for which thermodynamics and species
speciation are essentials. On the one side, existing models for metal chemistry usually describe
chemical behaviour of a limited amount of species in a rather diluted media with low ionic
strength, and quite commonly at ambient temperature. On the other side, aqueous solutions
obtained by dissolution of complex ore bodies are likely to have the following properties:
• Concentrated media, with very high ionic strength
• Valuable elements are in minor or trace concentration compared to impurities from trace
concentration to major concentration
• High temperature
Therefore thermodynamic modelling can be hardly applied to many of actual cases of
Hydrometallurgical ore treatment. Besides, extrapolating existing models to real cases, as far as
they could be appropriate, faces a lack of data. This lack of data and of the absence appropriate
models has at least 2 explanations:
• The complexity of the actual solutions makes modelling extremely difficult
• Measurement methods for determining the species in which metals are involved are to be
developed.
The problem of measurement method is also critical for other reasons besides thermodynamics
modelling. Speciation and chemical behaviour understanding in such complex media are not
always described in scientific literature. Phenomenon that can be observed and even controlled
experimentally can remain unexplained, because classical measurement methods may not be able
to give answers. Indeed measurement in complex and concentrated media is a challenge
considering that measuring trace metals in a concentrated matrix is difficult. The response of the
observed metal can be totally hidden by the noise or other components response.

CONCLUSIONS
The Gabonese Maboumine pyrochlore deposit is currently being studied by ERAMET for the
recovery of niobium, tantalum, rare earths and uranium. This ore shows mineralogical and
chemical characteristics that make it challenging to process by already known practices, from both
technical and economical points of view. Pyrochlores are in an advanced weathered state, as well as
very fine and entrapped into a goethite and crandalite matrix. Nevertheless recent improvements
in niobium, tantalum and rare earth chemistries in high ionic strength and hot aqueous media have
been made. It has allowed ERAMET Research to develop an innovative hydrometallurgical process,
which has been successfully operated at a pilot plant scale.

REFERENCES
C. K. Gupta, A. K. Suri (1994), Extractive Metallurgy of Niobium, CRC Press,

C. Polak, ‘Métallurgie et Recyclage du niobium et du tantale’, Dossier Techniques de l’ingénieur, m2365

R.J.H. Clark, D. Brown (1973), The Chemistry of Vanadium, Niobium and Tantalum, chapter 34 & 35,
Comprehensive Inorganic Chemistry, Pergamon Press.

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