The average abundance of scandium in the crust is 36 ′ 10-4%, which is equivalent to the abundance of beryllium, boron, strontium, tin, germanium, arsenic, selenium and tungsten, but its distribution is extremely dispersed, and it is a typical scattered lithophile element It is known that there are more than 800 kinds of scandium bearing minerals, but as independent scandium minerals, there are only a few kinds of scandium yttrium ores, scandium hydrophosphate ores, scandosilicate ores and titanium silicic acid rare gold ores, and the ore sources are small, which are rare in nature
At present, the reserves of scandium in the world are about 2000kt, of which 90~95% are contained in bauxite, phosphorite and ferrotitanium ore, and a small part in uranium, thorium, tungsten and rare earth ores [49], mainly distributed in Russia, China, Tajikistan, the United States, Madagascar, Norway and other countries CIS countries have systematically studied various types of associated scandium deposits. It is believed that sedimentary bauxite (Sc) deposits are rare in weathering leaching type related to alkaline ultrabasic rocks, rare earth phosphate rock (Sc) deposits and some iron titanium (Sc) deposits are the most important deposit types, and they are the main source of scandium
China is also a country rich in scandium resources, with huge reserves of scandium related minerals, such as bauxite and phosphorite deposits, porphyry type and quartz vein type tungsten deposits in South China, rare earth deposits in South China, Bayan Obo rare earth iron ore deposit in Inner Mongolia, and Panzhihua vanadium titanium magnetite deposit in Sichuan Bauxite (Sc) deposit and phosphorite (Sc) deposit are dominant, followed by tungsten (Sc) deposit, vanadium titanium magnetite deposit, rare earth (Sc) deposit and rare earth iron (Sc) deposit It is estimated that the reserves of scandium in bauxite and phosphorite ore are about 290,000 tons, accounting for 51% of the total reserves of all scandium ore types. The content is generally the average content of scandium in bauxite ore in the world (38 according to Sc2O3 μ G/g) 1~4 times, which may become an important scandium deposit and main source in China
