Mechanochemical Activation of Zircon Sands - A Low Temperature route for Liberation of Zirconia (OLP-0014)

Zircon is one of the important minerals that is exten-sively used as a raw material in ceramic industries. Indian reserve of zircon is estimated at 18.5 million tones that constitute abourt 32% of the proven global reserves. The conventional extraction process adopted by most of the industries is the alkali fusion of zircon at fairly highly temperatures and the efficiency ranges from 60-70%. There is lot of scope for zirconia and zirconia based chemicals and there is an urgent need to enhance the efficiency of extraction process. The growing demand for advanced ceramic materials such as stabilized zirconia further envisages the necessity to review the entire processing of zircon.