To produce high purity alumina as the raw material for sapphire growth, gibbsite, which is the precursor for the synthesis of alumina, was synthesized by the Bayer process, and treated with an acid solution to remove the sodium component. In this study, the digestion process was carried out under the following conditions: an Al/Na ratio of 0.9 with a 5 N NaOH solution and a temperature of 140 degrees C. Bauxite containing 75 wt% alumina was converted to a sodium aluminate solution, and 60 wt% of the dissolved aluminate was crystallized to gibbsite. The sodium content in the gibbsite, which was measured by inductively coupled plasma/optical emission spectroscopy, was reduced by approximately 5700 ppm and below 2900 ppm after the water washing and acid treatments, respectively. The sodium content decreased with increasing acid concentration in the solution, temperature and acid treatment time. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.