Abstract (eng)
Rare earths play a crucial role in modern life for a wide variety of applications. However, since applications usually involve only small quantities in terms of total weight and they are difficult to separate due to their similar chemical properties, they are rarely recycled. Accordingly, there is great scientific and economic interest in developing new separation and subsequent recycling processes. Here, ionic liquids represent a new possibility to solve these problems. Therefore, in this work, the ionic liquid trihexyltetradecylphosphonium 3-hydroxy-2-napthoate, abbreviated [P66614] [HNA], was used to extract and separate various rare earths from aqueous solution at pH 2.5. Lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, holmium, and lutetium were used for this purpose. These metals were chosen because lanthanum has the smallest atomic number of the rare earths and lutetium has the largest of the lanthanides. The other metals were freely chosen between these two elements. In the work itself, TXRF was used to determine the amount of metal that can be extracted from the aqueous solution, in a given period of time, and the amount of leaching, which was determined by TOC analyzer, after that period of time. First, single-element standards were used and then multi-element standards, with two different metals being used here. The goal was to achieve a separation of the metals of the multi-element standards by allowing one element to accumulate in the ionic liquid and the other to remain largely in the aqueous phase. Subsequently, an attempt was made to re-extract the extracted amount of metal, because this would allow the ionic liquid to be used more than once and the metals to be used again for technical purposes. Furthermore, the maximum of the extractable amount of metal, based on a saturation curve, was to be determined. In the single-element experiments, it was found that lanthanum, cerium, neodymium and lutetium could be extracted from the aqueous solution at a rate of about 90%, but holmium at only about 60%. On the basis of these values, multi-element standards were then prepared in which the metals were to be separated. It was found that separation is not possible, since neither of the two metals is preferentially extracted and, in the mixture, both metals have about the same extraction efficiency. Accordingly, a different ionic liquid has to be synthesized and tested for the separation. Furthermore, the ionic liquid is characterized by low leaching, although it could not be determined here whether there is a correlation between leaching and extraction efficiency. This would have to be investigated in follow-up experiments. In the back extraction, the multi-element experiments, in which one of the two elements represented lanthanum, showed a higher back extraction efficiency than in the single element experiments. In the other multi-element experiments, the re-extraction efficiency was about as high as in the single-element experiments, but it was always about the same for both elements, so that no separation could be achieved here either. Furthermore, of all the acids used, nitric acid showed the highest back extraction efficiency. Leaching was also low in these experiments. Finally, a saturation curve was determined using lanthanum, which showed that the ionic liquid can extract about 3-4x the amount of metal used in this work, in the form of 20 ml standards containing 10 mg/L by mass. Accordingly, it was shown in this work that although this ionic liquid is suitable for the extraction of rare earths from aqueous solutions, separation of them cannot be achieved.