METHOD OF LOPARITE CONCENTRATE PROCESSING Russian patent published in 2014 - IPC C22B59/00 C22B34/24 C22B5/10 

FIELD: metallurgy.

SUBSTANCE: pyrometallurgical processing comprises three steps: reduction, smelting and oxidation. Reduction step comprises carbothermic reduction of concentrate at limited amount of carbon in the system to reduce solely refractory metals (RM) to their carbides to get the process mix of oxides of rare-earth elements (RE) and RM carbides. Smelting step separates RE from TM carbides. Said separation consists in dissolution of RM in liquid iron. This brings about iron containing RM and slag composed by target product, i.e. RE oxides. Third oxidation step consists in processing RM-bearing iron with oxygen to produce steel and iron on the base of RM oxides.

EFFECT: production of RE oxides and RM oxides to be processed by known technologies.