It is a matter of strategic independence for Europe to urgently find processes taking account of environmental and economic issues, when mining and recycling rare earth elements (REE). The objective of the ERC REE-CYCLE project (reecycle-erc.blogspot.fr) is to develop the fundamental understanding involved in the process’ complex fluids (experimental and theoretical) concerning liquid-liquid extraction of REE and furthermore using it to design new, cost effective and environment-friendly processes. This is achieved by:
(1) Developing and assembling a new, fastand on-line measurement tool characterizing equilibrium distributions of ions near the macroscopic oil-water interface. This computer-controlled microfluidic device will give access to phase composition, water/oil phase activities and kinetics of ion transfer in controlled and reproducible manner.
(2) Developing advanced semi-analytic simulation of free energy variations and merge it with modeling of microstructures, involved at nano- and meso-scale, into a general colloidal modeling approach.
(3) Assembling a simple device based on pertraction with increased kinetics.
(4) Proposing and exploring new generations of formulations and process windows, based on the newly gained mechanism, kinetics and theoretical knowledge.
It is envisaged implementing findings into a pilot plant and demonstrating the feasibility of the newly proposed triggered lanthanide liquid-liquid extraction from recycled aqueous phases obtained by dissolution of used devices, such as magnets, Li-ion cells, batteries and low-consumption lamps and finally sea-water as non-commercial ultimate efficiency test.
Fig: The reference chemical potential of ion pairs compared in water (left) and in solvent (right). Difference in free energy per ion pair extracted from aqueous to solvent phase is ΔGtr, respectively. The selectivity between the two is the double difference between the two steps i.e. ΔΔGtr.
