Novel system for recovering scandium from hot spring water with fibrous graft adsorbent

瀬古 典明; 保科 宏行; 笠井 昇; 植木 悠二; 玉田 正男; 桐生 俊幸*; 田中 和也*; 高橋 牧克*

日本イオン交換学会誌, 21(3), p.117 - 122, 2010/07

The concentration of scandium dissolved in the hot spring water of Yukawa River, which is located in Kusatsu Town, Gunma, Japan is 17 mg-Sc/ton; this resource corresponds to 1.2 tons in daily flow. We have developed experimental equipment that uses fibrous adsorbents and is capable of selectively collecting scandium from hot spring water. Scandium recovery was carried out by pumping into hot spring water an adsorbent that was packed into a column of 155 mm in inner diameter and 500 mm in height. Such equipment was placed in the Yukawa River at Kusatsu Town. This equipment could be scaled up from lab scale to pilot scale. We found that this system is capable of collecting 200 g/yr of scandium per column when hot spring water flows with 1,000 L/day.