Smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines all contain rare earth metals which are environmentally damaging to mine – but a new technique means we can now extract them from coal waste instead
Rice University
Neodymium, europium, terbium and other rare earth metals that were once barely heard of are now commonplace in phone touchscreens, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and other modern technologies due to their useful magnetic and electronic properties. Mining them is expensive and inefficient, since large areas of land must be dug up to extract small amounts.
This rapid heating breaks open microscopic glass spheres in the ash that contain rare earth metals. It also converts the metals from phosphate to oxide forms that are easier to separate out using mild acids.
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