Recovery of Gallium from the Bayer Process for Alumina Using Amidoxime Impregnated Fibers.

[NNadir]

3. To be perfectly honest, I just pulled this flow chart off the Canadian...

...equivalent of the EPA's website.

One can, in detail, imagine a number of acids to precipitate the aluminum.

Since the reduction of alumina in the Hall Heroult process generates both CO2 and CF4 from the "green anodes" I would imagine that CO2 is readily available and cheap. The added advantage I suppose would be the bicarbonate buffer, but I haven't looked that deeply into the process details of the "normal" Bayer process. I would imagine that historical "red mud" from the time before gallium demand rise to cover the cost, would constitute a crude gallium ore.