A Comparative Study on Recent Developments for Individual Rare Earth Elements Separation

Facilitating the demands of modern society, namely, smartphones, televisions, electric vehicles, and high-stability aircraft structures, requires low-cost and high-performance materials and a corresponding change in the approach needed to design them. Rare earth elements (REEs) play a significant role in achieving these objectives by adding small amounts of these elements to alloys, thereby enhancing material properties. Despite being more abundant than precious metals, the 17 REEs exhibit subtle variations in their chemical and physical characteristics. Thus, their separation is still crucial for industrial applications. There is a corresponding need to develop more effective and efficient separation methods. Adding to the separation challenge is the complexity of the sources of REEs and related materials. Thus, large-scale production of REE materials is difficult. Current REE processing techniques can be categorized into pre-treatment, beneficiation, separation, and refining. Researchers have developed various technologies encompassing chemical, physical, and biological methods, focusing on economic and environmental considerations. However, not all these approaches can be scaled up for mass production. This article focuses on feasible strategies such as precipitation and crystallization, oxidation and reduction, ion exchange, adsorption, solvent extraction, and membrane separation. Further research into these traditional and modern methods can potentially revolutionize the separation dynamics of REEs.