A New Process for Rare Earth Metals Recovery

The recovery, separation and purification of rare earth elements are very difficult because they all have very similar properties.Solvent extraction is the most commonly used industrial separation method, but it is expensive due to the need for a large number of separation stages that are required.TDA Research Inc. (TDA) proposes to develop a new supported liquid membrane contactor that uses the existing extracting agents to separate and purify the rare earth elements.The proposed technology is highly energy efficient and requires only very small amounts of solvent, which will result in a low cost process with broad industrial potential.In the Phase I project, we will carry out experiments to demonstrate our concept at the bench-scale.We will also carry out detailed engineering analysis to evaluate the techno-economic viability of the new separation technology.