Bauxite is the primary aluminium ore (or main source of aluminium), which contains about 30–50% of alumina along with trace elements, such as calcium, sodium, zinc, gallium and REEs (Ochsenkühn-Petropulu et al., 1995; Smirnov and Molchanova, 1997). The Bayer process is applied to extract aluminium from bauxite, whereas it generates a solid ...