Avaliação do método de correção do efeito de matriz por coeficientes de influência empíricos em WDXRF para analisar terras raras em rejeito da cassiterita

Abstract

The use of rare earth as raw material for industry has grown rapidly, with great technological applicability, especially in the areas of chemistry, electronics, metallurgy, materials and others. Due to the fact that technology industry, the demands on reliability and speed of chemical analysis have increased considerably. Among analytical techniques capable of analyzing rare earth concentration, wavelength dispersion X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) provides qualitative and quantitative results quickly with high accuracy. However, the reliability of this technique depends on the correction of some factors, such as matrix effect. This work proposes a methodology for the chemical analysis of the rare earths elements La, Ce, Nd, Gd and Sm by WDXRF in the tailing of the cassiterite from the Pitinga mine (AM, Brazil). About 10 kg of the mining tailing sample was collected shortly after the ore processing in the mine's industrial plant. The quantification was based on the use of the mathematical method of matrix effect correction by empirical coefficients of influence. In addition, analyzes of the mineralogical phases of the sample were carried out by X-ray diffraction and chemical characterization of the major elements from tailings. The evaluation of the quality of the proposed methodology revealed high compliance with the expected values of the reference materials used. Finally, the existence of relevant quantities of rare earth present in the cassiterite tailings were identified in this work.