The precipitation of large cerium carbonate by Na₂CO₃ in various condition and its characterization: article

Cerium is one of the most abundant rare earth element. The application of cerium is mostly as catalysts for chemical processing, petroleum refining, catalytic converter, diesel additives and also can reduce emission of industrial gas released. The purpose of this study is to enlarge the size of cerium particle by precipitation method. Cerium carbonate was prepared using Sodium carbonate as precipitator. The effects of operational parameters to be studied were pH and concentration, while the other was fixed such as temperature at 50⁰C, stirring rate at 110 rpm, dosage rate, seed mass and effect of aging at 1 hours after completion of reagent addition. There are two methods of seeding precipitation been used to tested the different size of particle enlargement with pH and concentration as main parameter. High pH batch seeding precipitation shows the highest particle size at d (0.10), d (0.5) and d (0.9) which is 15.211, 47.605 and 91.748. Low concentration of Cerium carbonate gave the highest particle size in effect of concentration which was d (0.10) = 10.99 µm, d (0.5) = 41.87 µm and d (0.9) = 83.41 µm. The sample from Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd was taken as reference. It could be concluded that batch seeding precipitation method at high pH and low concentration shows great potential for enlargement of Cerium carbonate particle more than 40 µm.