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ABSTRACT: Zircon is an important industrial mineral and apart from its own applications, serves as the
primary raw material for the production of a series of technologically significant zirconium and hafnium
chemicals. However, due to its high melting point and chemical inertness, processing of zircon is a major
technological challenge and very aggressive methods have to be adopted to open up zircon. This paper will
review some these methods and attempt to determine the trends in the processing of zircon. Along with some
of the other techniques, the carbo-chlorination of zircon in an electro-thermal fluidized bed reactor, which
constituted a part of the Pyro-chemical process for preparing nuclear grade zirconium, was extensively
investigated in our laboratory. The technological challenges and the environmental and economic benefits of
this technique vis-a-vis the other established practices will be discussed, with emphasis on production of
nuclear grade zirconium.
2.3 Reductive Smelting with Carbon in The standard free energy change of the
Air chlorination of zircon at 1400 K is 312.7 kJ/mol
zircon (Barin & Knacke, 1973). At this
In this technique the zircon and carbon mixtures temperature, even if pure chlorine is admitted to
are smelted in air in an electric arc furnace the reactor and flushing conditions maintained,
resulting in the formation of ZrCN. This carbo- thermodynamics calculation yield the maximum
nitride is then chlorinated in a separate reactor to possible partial pressures of the products as
produce the ZrCl4. For preparing N.G. metals, the
MIBK-Thiocynate route is followed. The
Trends in Zircon Processing 105
1 disturbance of the charge to achieve adequate
p ZrCl 4 = p SiCl 4 = pO 2 = 8.58 × 10 -4 atm. …(4) rates of chlorination. Externally heated fluid bed
2
reactors are also energy inefficient. An Electro-
thermal Fluidized bed reactor combines the
Feeder higher reactivities of a fluidized bed reactor with
the convenience and efficiency of direct resistance
heating. It consists of a particulate bed of solids
some fraction of which should be conducting.
To Two or more electrodes are inserted into this bed,
Condenser
the bed is fluidized and voltage applied across the
electrodes. Electric current passes through the bed
resulting in in-situ heating. A sketch of the 125
mm i.d. reactor used in our studies is shown in
Disengaging Fig. 1. It was operated for prolonged periods at
Section around 1150ºC, both for ZrO2 and zircon
chlorination and produced around 1 kg of the
anhydrous chloride per hr from zircon.