12. Conclusion

In both geology and metallurgy, scandium is a residual and highly dispersed metal. This unusual behavior is a handicap when it comes to evaluating mining and metallurgical projects aimed at recovering and extracting it.

As far as metal recovery is concerned, the scandium content of an ore or residue is not in itself a decisive condition: a rich material may prove difficult to recover due to the chemical complexity and wide dispersion of the metal it contains. It is therefore necessary first to clarify scandium's mineralogical status and the chemical combinations in which it is involved.

Price trends for scandium and its compounds are highly volatile, a classic feature of any speculative business. In a short space of time, prices for "high purity" grades can vary by a factor of five. The fact that scandium is linked, as a by-product, to an...