Black gold of Cox's Bazaar

dioxide. Long ago I did some research on Cox's Bazaar beach sand during my incumbency in the chemistry laboratory of the Atomic Energy Centre in Dhaka. My study was on the enrichment of ilmenite into synthetic rutile by chemical method. The process involved oxidation of ilmenite with air in a fluidised bed followed by reduction with carbon, both at high temperature. This was followed by leaching the reduced product with 5% hydrochloric acid. I obtained an enrichment of 72% titanium dioxide that was too lean for rutile and too rich for ilmenite. It wasn't a satisfactory result, so I discontinued my research study. I followed published literature for my investigation. Due to limitations in my experimental set-up I didn't measure temperature or the quantity of air to effect oxidation. I have not heard of any other experimenter in Bangladesh having successfully upgraded Cox's Bazaar ilmenite into rutile.

The Beach Sand Exploitation Centre at Cox's Bazaar, a laboratory of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, enriches ilmenite by physical method. Repeated separation results in a concentrated product containing 97% titanium dioxide, which is a satisfactory end result. Repeated separation may be a costly process. Due to its low titanium content, the black beach sand of Cox's Bazaar, after all, may not be so golden a mineral as Mr. Kabir thinks.