Emerging technologies for the recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) from the end-of-life electronic wastes: a review on
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Emerging technologies for the recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) from the end-of-life electronic wastes: a review on progress, challenges, and perspectives Teklit Gebregiorgis Ambaye 1,2 & Mentore Vaccari 1 & Francine Duarte Castro 1 & Shiv Prasad 3 & Sami Rtimi 4 Received: 22 March 2020 / Accepted: 5 June 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The demand for rare earth elements (REEs) has significantly increased due to their indispensable uses in integrated circuits of modern technology. However, due to the extensive use of high-tech applications in our daily life and the depletion of their primary ores, REE’s recovery from secondary sources is today needed. REEs have now attracted attention to policymakers and scientists to develop novel recovery technologies for materials’ supply sustainability. This paper summarizes the recent progress for the recovery of REEs using various emerging technologies such as bioleaching, biosorption, cryo-milling, electrochemical processes and nanomaterials, siderophores, hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, and supercritical CO2. The challenges facing this recovery are discussed comprehensively and some possible improvements are presented. This work also highlights the economic and engineering aspects of the recovery of REE from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Finally, this review suggests that greener and low chemical consuming technologies, such as siderophores and electrochemical processes, are promising for the recovery of REEs present in small quantities. These technologies present also a potential for large-scale application. Keywords Biosorption . Bio-sorbent . Desorption . Rare earth metals . Recovery
Introduction Rare earth elements (REEs) form a group of 17 metals naturally found in the environment, including 15 lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium (Mikołajczak et al. 2017). They can be divided into light rare earth, which includes cerium (Ce), Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues * Teklit Gebregiorgis Ambaye [email protected] * Sami Rtimi [email protected] 1
Department of Civil, Environmental, Architectural Engineering and Mathematics, University of Brescia, Via Branze 43, 25123 Brescia, Italy
2
Department of chemistry, Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia
3
Centre for Environment Science & Climate Resilient Agriculture (CESCRA), Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110012, India
4
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
lanthanum (La), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), samarium (Sm), and heavy rare earth, comprising dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lutetium (Lu), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y). REEs can be extracted from reserves of bastnaesite, monazite, xenotime, and ion adsorption clays (Wiche et al. 2017). However, their presence in the environment commonly makes mining challenges (Gambogi 2019). Therefore, despite their relative abundance in the earth’s crust, many o
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