Engineering Commons^™

Separation Of Rare Earth Elements From Aluminum Using Ion-Exchange Chromatography, Shabrina Nurfitriani, Hoon Choi, Nien-Hwa Linda Wang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Demand of rare earth elements (REEs) has increased tremendously due to their key roles in electronics and emerging technology. Recently, new technology was developed at Purdue to extract REEs from coal fly ash. This study is focused on the separation of aluminum ions (Al), a major impurity in the extract, from REEs. The goal is to test the feasibility of an ion-exchange process for separating REEs from a highly-concentrated Al solution. First, we reduced the resin particle size to decrease dispersion and diffusion effects, to increase resin productivity, and to reduce the amounts of REEs and the ion-exchange resin required …