Refining Process and Identifying Content of Local Iron Sand

Abstract

We reported simple processing of local iron sand in order to increase the purity of magnetic phase. The refining process of iron sand is carried out in two stages, namely the iron sand extract using a permanent magnet and the purification process. The purification process was carried out by co-precipitation method in varying of the dissolving temperatures and volume of HCl. The iron salt solution formed is then precipitated using NH4OH solution and then sintered at 100 °C and 1000 °C, respectively. All samples are characterized by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to identify the elemental content and the crystal structure. From the XRF measurements, it was found that the Fe content before purification process was 32.68 %, increasing to 33.12 % after purification process with HCL volume of 75 ml and sintered at 100 °C. From XRD measurement, it was found that the crystal structure of iron sand before purification process was dominated by magnesioferrite (33.2 %), and magnetite (20.2 %). After purification process at 1000 °C, the magnesioferrite phase increased to 80.2 % and 50.2 % for HCl volume of 50 ml and 75 ml, respectively, while the magnetite phase increase to become 34.5 % for 100 ml of HCl.