Chemical engineering student’s research extracts rare earth minerals from phosphogypsum — manmade lakes of radioactive, toxic waste.
Chemical engineering student’s research extracts rare earth minerals from phosphogypsum — manmade lakes of radioactive, toxic waste.
Most people would view a lake full of radioactive, toxic waste as garbage — not Adam Smerigan. A doctoral candidate in Penn State’s Robert V. Waltemeyer Department of Chemical Engineering, Smerigan works with Professor Rui Shi in the Sustainable Design, Systems and Decision-Making (S2D2) Lab to focus on finding treasure in the trash — recovering rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, cerium and praseodymium, from toxic waste. Elements like these and more are used in everyday electronic devices like smartphones.
Through his research, Smerigan is developing an innovative, profitable and sustainable method of harvesting rare earth elements. He will graduate with his doctoral degree this summer.
Specifically, Smerigan’s research explores mineral recovery from a type of toxic waste known as phosphogypsum, which is created as a byproduct of processing phosphate to be used eventually in fertilizer, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Read More: Pennsylvania State University
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