Efficient Iron Removal to Produce High Purity Quartz Sand by Micro-Inclusion Bursting Using Microwave Pretreatment Combined with Different Acid

The one of major impurities in quartz is iron, which has a great impact on the properties of the material and should be be strictly removed in many applications. In this study, a low-energy consumption, simple, fast processing is introduced by combination microwave treatment with different acid leaching. Selective heating of microwaves is used to process quartz, causing local phase changes to improve the purification effect. Acid leaching was used to remove the iron in the quartz matrix. Under optimized conditions, the iron content can be reduced to below 0.167 ppmw with one single purification pass.