For the past ten years, much effort has been expended by several research teams to develop an economic process for recovering thorium, rare earths and uranium from monazite sands. Recently, a process was developed at the Ames Laboratory which possessed many attractive features. The major disadvantage inherent to the process was the large cost for oxalic acid. The oxalic acid was used to precipitate rare earth and thorium oxalates from a sulfate and phosphate solution of these elements. The object of the oxalate precipitation was to separate the thorium and rare earths from uranium, sulfate and phosphate ions. Since this method for processing monazite sands was so attractive, concerted effort was made to discover a method whereby the oxalic acid could be recycled.