Abstract
It was hypothesized that bauxite digestion may be improved by using microwave heating as it has been shown in literature that some material processes have improved efficiency. To test this hypothesis, a set of digestion experiments were conducted using gibbsite, one of the major minerals in bauxite. Gibbsite was digested at various temperatures (50, 75, and 95 °C) in either 1 M or 6 M sodium hydroxide solutions for 30 min using either a convection oven or a 2.45 GHz microwave applicator. Results show that microwave heating provided an increase of 5–7% in the digestion after 30 min and required around 1/10th the time to heat the solutions compared to conventional heating. Electromagnetic simulations show that preferential heating occurs at the solution surface creating a temperature gradient within the solution. Although vigorous stirring of the solution was used to minimize the temperature gradient, it could still be responsible for the observed difference in digestion. Digestion of bauxite itself yielded similar results to the gibbsite.
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