Rare earth elements sustain the Information Age, and securing a supply of these metals has become a matter of national and economic security.
Rare earth elements sustain the Information Age, and securing a supply of these metals has become a matter of national and economic security. They’re ubiquitous in our smart technologies, high performance materials and industrial catalysts. Yet reclaiming them is complex, dangerous and expensive.
That’s why UC Santa Barbara’s Justin Wilson has partnered with the mineral recovery company REEGen. “We’ve developed a new approach to extract rare earth elements from end-of-life products like electronic waste from phones, batteries and discarded catalytic converters,” said Wilson, a professor in UCSB’s Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. The new technique, published in Communications Chemistry, combines the strengths of solid-state extraction with precision chemistry. The goal is to make rare earth element recycling financially, logistically and environmentally attractive.
Back to the Periodic Table
The rare earth elements (REEs) encompass scandium, yttrium and the elements from lanthanum through lutetium. They sit deep within the periodic table, in the section that’s often excised and placed underneath.
Read more at University of California - Santa Barbara
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