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Rapid separation of heavy rare-earth elements.

Moore BW; Froisland LJ; Petersen AE

Salt Lake City, UT: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, RI 9564, 1995 Jan; :1-17

20026516

The U.S. Bureau of Mines investigated the separation of heavy rate-earth elements (REE) in an ion exchange process. An ion-exchange column consisting of two sections, a loading section and a separation section, provides high 1evels of REE loading and good REE separation with an expected processing cycle of less than a month, while current ion-exchange technology requires more than 5 mouths. A different resin is used in each section: sulfonic resin in the loading section and iminodiacetic resin in the separation section. The separation section is further divided into two segments: the first conditioned with NH4 and the second with acid. Erbium is loaded onto both segments of the separation column as a retaining ion. Bands of mixed REE eluting between separated bands of pure REE were recycled directly to the columns. Without mixed-band recycle, over 80% of the REE eluted from the column was separated into fractions with 99% purity of each element; with such recycle, the percentage of separated elements can be increased to around 90%.

Chemical-extraction; Chemical-reactions; Chemical-synthesis; Mining-industry

19950101

Report of Investigations

1995

PB95-251864

A02

RI-9564

SLRC

Salt Lake City, UT: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, RI 9564

UT