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Rare Earth Extractive Metallurgy

Rare earths are constituted by a mixture of oxides and hydroxides from elements that belongs to the block F of the periodic table. These elements present similar ionic radius and have similar chemical behaviour which make difficult its separation. Initially can be thought that the name rare is due to the fact that they are not abundant, however the case is totally different. Really, they were called rare because at the first years of the last century was difficult to treats the minerals and obtain the respective metal. For that reason, these elements were used rarely for anything for many years.

The Rare Earth primary products are mainly used as raw materials for high-purity individual Rare Earth chemicals, and in the making of petroleum and environment protection catalysts, mischmetal, polishing powders and Rare Earth fertilizers. Most Rare Earth metals can be processed to different shape and size for evaporation materials, sputtering targets and other specialty applications. Super pure Rare Earth oxides are obtained by Ion-exchange technology which involves polymerized extractants and solvent. This technology can reduce both Rare Earth impurities and non-Rare Earth impurities significantly, to purify individual Rare Earth oxides again to above 99.999% purity, some oxides can achieve 99.9999% purity. These super pure Rare Earth Oxides are widely used in making laser crystal, fiber coating, and high-tech ceramics.

Rare earth elements are chemically active, so they can remove impurities in iron and steel such as nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and other elements. In addition, they can also modify the morphology of sulfide and graphite so as to refine grains and strengthen matrix of cast iron. Mischmetal widely used in the iron and steel industry and the production of nickel metal hydride batteries, which is widely used in portable electronic equipment with smaller size and longer life span. Rare Earth alloys such as Scandium-Aluminium, Scandium-Magnesium, Yttrium-Aluminium, Yttrium-Magnesium and Neodymium-Manganese are widely used in metallurgy, acting as strong de-oxidizers and to increase resistance to corrosion at high temperatures. Related mostly Rare Earth elements are Lanthanum, Cerium, Neodymium, Samarium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Thulium, Scandium, Yttrium, praseodymium, Europium, Gadolinium, Holmium, Ytterbium, and Lutetium.

Nowadays, the field of solvent extraction has done many improvements in the extraction and recovery of rare elements. Solvent extraction is now a very well established and most important process in hydrometallurgy for the separation, purification and concentration of metal ions and its development has let to recover elements that initially were very difficult to treat. There is a very large number of extractants for commercial use, and perhaps two of the most used are carboxylic acids and alkyl phosphoric acids which are used in the recovery of yttrium and europium, respectively.

Although the extractive metallurgy of the rare earth has grown a lot, is indispensable to continue investigating new routes to its treatment because the extractive processes need to improve its performance. Perhaps, the two fields where the work must be focused is the ion exchange by using resins and solvents because most time rare earth trends to be present in mineralized bodies.

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