Rare-earth elements (REEs) are chemical elements that include fifteen lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium. Due to their geochemical properties, REE ores are not widely available and the extraction of REEs is difficult. Since the REE resources are concentrated in a few countries including China, the ability to use REEs has become one of the important technical and geopolitical challenges for the global society. With the ever-increasing environmental concerns, it has become very important to find sustainable pathways to obtain resources with reduced environmental footprints. In light of this challenge, closing the material cycle and extracting the useful materials from the end of life of products have a great potential to reduce both the supply risk and landfill pressure. In particular, rare earth elements (REE) has a high economic incentive in recovering from unconventional resources such as industrial wastes due to their high demand market. Iron slag and steel slag are alkaline silicate wastes that are produced during steel-making processes. Those wastes are environmentally hazardous when landfilled but do contain a large amount of valuable materials including calcium, aluminum, and magnesium as well as silica and REEs depending on the geographic regions of their feedstock origins. In our study, we have developed an REE enrichment scheme from slag that involves hydrometallurgical treatment, selective dissolution, and co-precipitation of iron and REE. Depending on the concentration ratio of Fe and REEs, the grade of recovered REEs can vary significantly. Thus, a step-wise separation of precipitated Fe-oxides and Fe-oxide/REEs is needed. Solvent extraction is another option to selectively separate REEs from the leachate containing high concentrations of different metal ions. In this study, different pH conditions and chemical additives for the co-precipitation of REEs are experimented and the possibility of integrating a liquid-liquid extraction process that is using greener solvents such as ionic liquids to extract high purity REEs are investigated.

Materials distillation of unconventional resources: Innovative separation and enrichment of rare earth elements via co-precipitation and liquid-liquid extraction

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

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