The relationships of crystal type, crystallization speed, purity, grain size and shape of rare earth carbonate with precipitation and crystallization conditions are very important for the production of rare earth carbonate with high efficiency, high quality and low cost. It is necessary for us for further understand the crystallization process mechanism and the factors effect on the crystallization. In the present paper, the crystallization characteristic, composition and crystal phase type of yttrium carbonates or ammonium yttrium carbonates precipitated from yttrium chloride solution using ammonium bicarbonate as precipitant were determined by chemical analysis, X ray powder diffraction and the pH situ determination. It was found that the crystal phase type was dominated by the feed molar ratio of ammonium bicarbonate to yttrium chloride, and the crystallization speed and the crystal composition were also influenced by temperature, feed manner and aging period etc. When precipitating and aging under lower temperature, crystallization is easy to take place in the high feed molar ratio zone, and when increasing temperature, crystallization will take place both in lower and higher feed molar ratio zones. The results show that spherical yttrium carbonate with tengerite type crystal phase can be formed within the temperature 30～70℃ when feed molar ratio of ammonium bicarbonate to yttrium chloride is less than 4, and that a rhombus flake crystal, which possesses the composition of ammonium yttrium quasi double carbonate and a new XRD pattern, is formed when the feed molar ratio is over 4. Their compositions can be represented as (NH4)aY(CO3)b(OH)c·nH2O, a< 1, 1< b< 2, c=3+a-2b. A fine crystal of ammonium yttrium double carbonate with the formula of (NH4)Y(CO3)2·H2O can also be obtained as using an enough amount of ammonium bicarbonate and aging enough time.
