Critical Materials Institute project – Enhanced Separation of Critical Materials:

Separation of individual rare earth elements (REE) is regarded as the most difficult processing step in the production of high purity rare earth oxides for end-use technology applications due to their inherent chemical similarities.  The current state-of-the-art for industrial REE separations utilizes solvent extraction with phosphonic acids, a complex process notorious for its excessive chemical consumption, wastewater effluents, and hundreds of processing steps required to produce individual purified REE.  This project seeks to enable domestic REE production by providing economically viable and environmentally sustainable alternatives for REE separations using novel separation technologies that significantly reduce capital and operating costs. Early-stage research is being conducted to design and test new REE extractants with high intra-lanthanide separation factors and to work with industrial partners to commercialize these new reagents along with the new process technologies that they enable.