For several years, IPEN/CNEN-SP has been working in the separation of the Rare Earth (RE) elements. A simple and economic procedure for the purification of technical grade cerium concentrate is described. The highly pure cerium dioxide is designed to be used as spectrochemical standard. It is obtained by association of the fractional precipitation technique, in the system RECl3/NH4OH/ Air/H2O2, to enrich the cerium up to 90% and then it is upgraded by ion exchange technique to 99.99% CeO2. The quality control warranty was accomplished by inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and neutron activation analysis. The collected values for the accompanying Rare Earth elements in a CeO2 sample are the following (ppm): La(36), Pr(19), Nd(161), Sm(11), Eu(5.3), Gd(113), Tb(89), Dy(2), Ho(0.05), Er(1), Tm(<0.05), Yb(11), Lu(19) and Y(2.1), respectively. The purity of this cerium oxide is comparable to the international spectrographic standards.
cerium dioxide; spec pure standard; rare earth fractionations; ICP-MS; neutron activation
