Hydrometallurgical recycling of rare earth elements from secondary resources

The rare earth elements (REEs) are a material group that is becoming increasingly important in modern day technologies, with applications in electronics (e.g. FeNdB magnets and luminescent phosphors), chemical industry (e.g. REE catalysts), energy industry (e.g. NiMH batteries and windmills) and medicine (e.g. Gd MRI contrast fluid). Considering...

Recovery of neodymium as (Na, Nd)(SO4)2 from the ferrous fraction of a general WEEE shredder stream

Neodymium is a critical element used in many high-tech applications. However, despite this, the EU is entirely dependent on China for its Nd supply. This has driven the EU to develop recycling strategies to recover its Nd from end-of-life (EoL) products and wastes, and establish a domestic supply. This paper proposes a process to recycle Nd from...

Hydrometallurgical recovery of rare earth elements from mine tailings and WEEE

The present study proposes three distinct processes to recycle rare earth elements (REE) from two low-grade secondary resources: REE-containing mine tailings and ferrous scrap from shredded waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). The first developed process extracts both REE and phosphorus from the apatite mineral contained within...