September 2024 Metallurgy Blog
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September 16, 2024
Scientists Create Safer and Greener Method to Purify Rare Earth Metals
Scientists Create Safer and Greener Method to Purify Rare Earth Metals
Purifying rare earth metals is a very toxic and dangerous procedure that usually involves the use of hazardous solvents and strong acids. Scientist at Sandia National Laboratory developed a much safer method to purify these metals. They pioneered an environmentally friendly technique to extract the rare earth elements from watery mixtures. The scientists made metal organic frameworks (MOFs) to test if they could absorb these metals from the ore. The MOFs were designed to act like sponges, absorbing the metal as they come in contact with it. To analyze the synthesized sponges’ effectiveness, they used computer simulations and X-ray-based experiments. The primary goal of the project was to design sponges that selectively absorb only one metal while leaving all the others. The team's efforts proved to have some success as they successfully showed that their “sponges” were able to extract a given metal from a mixture of other metals. Sandia National Laboratories geochemist and project lead Anastasia Ilgen said, "We synthesized MOFs with variable surface chemistry and were able to show through adsorption experiments that these MOFs can pick out rare-earth elements from a mixture of other metals. They are more selective for the rare earths—that's good. Importantly, we illustrated that their ability to pick out metals can be fine-tuned by adding chemical groups on their surfaces." Learn more about this topic here.
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