Rare Earth Adsorption Column

Discipline: MSE

Advisor: Shruti Vyas

Rare earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium are critical in making strong motors, and are thus heavily used by the automotive and renewable energy industries, among others. Extracting rare earths from their parent ores is a complex and resource intensive process, so recycling them would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly; however, only 1% of all refined REEs are recycled. This project aims to ameliorate this fact by providing a low-cost, modular, and scalable adsorption column design that can help reclaim valuable REEs from a solution. By exchanging the packing material, different metals can be selectively targeted; in this project, we used calcium alginate and carbon nanotubes to target neodymium and dysprosium as a proof of concept. By processing secondary waste streams like end-of-life electronic components and free oceanic REEs, this adsorption column system could reduce reliance on Chinese bastnäsite and monazite mining and reduce the environmental impact of both that mining and electronic waste.

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