Rare earth elements (REEs) market has demonstrated increasing in global demand. REEs have multiple technological applications and contribute widely to the manufacturing of electrical vehicle, communication devices and industrial magnets. However, the global supply of REEs has faced shortages and price shocks due to geopolitical activity which led the US DOE to classify the lack of a domestic REE supply as a vulnerability to US economic security. Traditional REE extraction requires large amounts of acids and organic solvents and has a negative impact on the environment. This led to investigating other domestic and more environmentally friendly sources like coal fly ash. We developed a new sorbent media with the capacity to concentrate REEs from coal fly ash leachate with preference toward the more valuable heavy REEs. This new material was used in columns experiments to separate and concentrate REEs. Acid was used to release the concentrated REEs and the final REE concentrate was precipitated with oxalic acid and calcined to yield rare earth oxide powder as the final product. Preliminary experiments produced REE oxide powders ranging from 6-12% (wt/wt) with an enrichment of 300x. Separation and higher enrichment percentage of REEs was also studied. This process may provide an organic solvent-free and environmentally friendly method of extracting and recovering REEs.

Concentration and separation of REEs from coal fly ash leachate using a novel ligand associated organosilica media

ACS Fall 2021

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