CHEMICAL AND RADIOANALYTICAL PROCEDURES FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE OF SOME EGYPTIAN BLACK SAND MINERALS CONCENTRATES

Crude monazite (58 %) obtained from Egyptian black sand beach (at Rashid, NMA) is mineralogically, radiometrically, and chemically identified as an “input” raw material.Conditions are then optimized through processing batches of monazite in bench scale to produce phosphoric acid and thorium.The process movement is controlled, through applying chemical analysis of the products obtained at the different process stages. This achieve qualified “out put” products with the least contaminants.Spectrophotometry and laser-flouremetery are mainly utilized as the instruments analytical controllers for monitoring the process.Standard deviations, accuracies, precisions, slopes ratios and mean control charts are widely applied to assure product qualities.The results obtained prove the probabilities of producing highly purified phosphoric acid (31 % P2O5) and white thorium oxide (92.25 % ThO2) with recoveries 87.5 % and 79.4 % respectively. Relative standard deviations in all analyses are less than ± 6 %.