Precipitation of Cerium carbonate with addition of Sodium carbonate into Cerium chloride solution

Cerium was one of the most abundant rare earth element. The application of cerium was mostly as catalysts for chemical processing, petroleum refining, catalytic converter, diesel additives and also can reduce emission of industrial gas released. The purpose of thisstudy was to enlarge the size of cerium particle by precipitation method. The large Cerium carbonate was prepared by adding Sodium carbonate into Cerium chloride solution to a Cerium carbonate precipitate. The effects of operational parameter to be studied was method of adding the seed and concentration into the precipitation, while the other was fixed such as temperature at 50⁰C, final pH at 5.8, stirring rate at 110 rpm, dosage rate 1.0 ml/min for CeCl₃ and 1.5 ml/min for Na₂CO₃, (Ce₂(CO₃) ₃ seed mass which was 2.5 g and effect of aging at 1 hours after precipitation was complete. There are two methods of seeding precipitation been used to tested the different size of particle enlargement with. 2.5 g of (Ce₂(CO₃)₃ was used as seed for both precipitation. Particle size distribution from Malvern particle size analyser show that sample with step-wise precipitation has large size than normal seeding precipitation. Step-wise precipitation shows particle size of d (0.10), d (0.5) and d (0.9) which is 13.41 μm, 41.17 μm and 79.19 μm. The 0.14 M CeCl₃ concentration particle size of d (0.10), d (0.5) and d (0.9) which is 8.83 μm, 42.95 μm and 86.45 μm. It could be concluded that step-wise precipitation method at high pH and CeCl₃ concentration at 0.14 M show a great potential for enlargement of Cerium carbonate particle more than 40 µm.