The demand for Scandium is in a steep increase owing to the technological developments in green energy sources and light weight vehicles and that is why it is classified as one of the critical materials for future technologies. This critical element is not "rare" in the nature; however, it hardly concentrates as a mineral. Thus, secondary resources that contains trace amounts gain significance to extract Sc and meet the demand for this element. Bauxite residue (BR) is proved to be one of the existing and promising sources that provides a vast Sc supply. Although many studies aiming to extract Sc had been done, some of the processing problems, such as recovery of a trace element from a highly complex matrix, formation of the silica gel during leaching, multiple-stage operations for high purity, etc., were remained unsolved. Hence, this dissertation work focusses on identifying and unraveling these problems with novel and tailored processing methods.