High Tech devices include different rare earth elements (REE) such Nd3+, Eu3+, Y3+, Dy3+ and Tb3+. The scarcity of REE and the environmental threaten that they represent urge for technological approaches to recover such REE after their life cycle. On the other hand, banana crop generates tons of biowastes every year with very limited industrial interest, thus resulting in an environmental problem. The banana wastes are classified in banana rachis (BR), banana pseudo-stem (BPS) and banana peel (BP). The current work demonstrated the potential use of such biowastes as adsorbent materials for REE recovery, which elucidated adsorption mechanism is based on the presence of carboxylic and other oxygen containing groups. The three materials from banana wastes render good adsorption capacities, being the best candidate BR that presents ~100 mg/g for most of the studied REE. The adsorption process is fast, reaching the 60% uptake in 8 min and the equilibrium within 50 min. The subsequent REE recovery from the adsorbent using EDTA as desorbing solution is ca. 100%. Therefore, banana wastes represent promising renewable materials to recover REE from aqueous solutions using a rapid and simple process.

Rare earths recovery from aqueous solution using banana crop wastes

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.