I am studying the environmental impacts of producing yttrium compounds, like yttrium carbonate hexahydrate and yttrium oxide hexahydrate. In my research, both of these compounds are produced by a reaction between Y2O3 and other acids.

I need to understand where Y2O3 comes from, without it being from sol-gel or precipitation methods, because those methods consider the use of the compounds referred above (yttrium nitrate or chloride) and I would just be getting an infinite cycle of production and no answer.

Basically, for the beginning, yttrium (Y) is mined and works as my raw material. My question is, how is this initial mined yttrium transformed, in order to form Y2O3?