Rare Earth Extraction, Separation, and Recovery from Ores and Waste Streams
This community focuses on the chemical processes required to isolate rare earth elements from raw ores, industrial by-products, and secondary waste materials. The work is driven by the need to separate these chemically similar metals into high-purity forms for industrial use.
The research centers on hydrometallurgical techniques, specifically acid leaching, solvent extraction, and ion exchange. A significant portion of the work addresses the recovery of rare earths from bauxite residue (red mud), phosphogypsum, and spent nuclear fuel. Methods include the use of ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, and selective adsorption agents to distinguish between specific lanthanides. The community also investigates the separation of actinides like uranium and thorium from rare earth matrices, as well as the environmental impacts of mining and processing.
The community is most heavily concentrated in research tracked for Lanthanum, where it represents 5.1% of all Lanthanum papers, and Neodymium, where it accounts for 4.8%. It also holds a significant share of Uranium research at 2.4%. In terms of absolute volume, Nitrogen research contributes the most papers to this group, with 4,128 entries, followed by Phosphorus with 2,764.
The community comprises 31,034 papers, published primarily in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, Solvent Extraction and Ion Exchange, and Hydrometallurgy.
Recent work continues to focus on sustainable recovery methods, including the use of biomass-based adsorption, membrane separation, and the recovery of rare earths from phosphogypsum and urban waste streams.