Rare earth elements are essential to the use of modern technology and are key components of most electronic products. Despite the importance of rare earth elements, only about 1% of them are recovered from the final product, and the rest is turned into waste.
There have been recent challenges in developing efficient rare earth element recovery processes. This article will discuss different methods of recovering rare earth elements and show that rare earth elements can be recovered from waste to make permanent magnets.
Application of Rare Earth Elements:
Most rare earth elements are paramagnetic. Gadolinium is more ferromagnetic than iron at 0°C. Terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, etc. also exhibit ferromagnetic properties at low temperatures. The low melting points of lanthanum and cerium and the high vapor pressures of samarium, europium, and ytterbium show great differences in the physical properties of rare earth metals. The thermal neutron absorption cross-sections of samarium, europium, and yttrium are larger than those of cadmium and boron, which are widely used in nuclear reactor control materials. Rare earth metals have plasticity, with samarium and ytterbium being the best. Except for ytterbium, yttrium group rare earth have higher hardness than cerium group rare earth.
Rare earth elements have been widely used in electronics, petrochemical, metallurgy, machinery, energy, light industry, environmental protection, agriculture, and other fields. The application of rare earth can produce fluorescent materials, rare earth metal hydride battery materials, electric light source materials, permanent magnet materials, hydrogen storage materials, catalytic materials, precision ceramic materials, laser materials, superconducting materials, magnetostrictive materials, magnetic refrigeration materials, Magneto-optical storage materials, optical fiber materials, etc.
The commonly used chloride system is KCl-RECl3. They are widely used in industrial and agricultural production and scientific research. Adding a small amount of rare earth to steel, cast iron, and alloys can greatly improve the performance. Magnetic materials made of rare earth have extremely strong magnetic properties and are widely used. It is widely used as a catalyst in the chemical industry. Rare earth oxides are important luminescent materials and laser materials.
