Recent years have seen the application of the concept of fluidisation extended to different kinds of industrial processes. This technology now plays a central role in the chemical and petrochemical industries, in power generation and in mineral processing and metallurgy. The current research is directed towards gas-phase extraction of metals because of the high yield of recovery that can potentially be achieved. This process achieves the extraction of metals by using a volatile organic reagent, which passes through the feed material and reacts selectively with the metal to be extracted. The product is a volatile metal complex, which is removed from the residual gangue by a carrier gas. The results showed that the procedure could be successfully applied to recover aluminium, chromium, vanadium and iron with acetylacetone from their respective solid oxides in a fluidised bed. The percentage recovery ranged from 75.2% for iron to 48.2% for chromium. Kinetic investigations were performed to estimate the activation energy required for each reaction. The recovery of the metals depended on the temperature and reaction time. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.