Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers, in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), have designed a new process, based on a naturally occurring protein, that could extract and purify rare earth elements (REE) from low-grade sources. It could offer a new avenue toward a more diversified and sustainable REE sector for the United States.
The protein, lanmodulin, enables a one-step extraction and purification of REEs from complex metal mixtures, including electronic waste and coal byproducts.
[...] In 2018, lanmodulin produced by certain bacteria was isolated and characterized by professor Joseph Cotruvo's team at PSU. It is the only known macro chelator that has naturally evolved to reversibly sequester REE ions. Classic macromolecules sequester elements like iron or calcium, but do not selectively sequester REEs. The LLNL and PSU teams investigated lanmodulin's solution chemistry and potential use for industry-oriented applications. Their work offers direct evidence that lanmodulin forms highly stable and water-soluble complexes across the lanthanide series while exhibiting minimal affinity for most non-REEs.
China recently threw world markets into turmoil by restricting exports of Rare Earth Elements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @10:06AM
What's the problem, just import the Chinese products and refine those rare stuff at your leisure - they're in higher concentration than in the soil and the Chinese sell those products dirt cheap anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday July 18 2020, @11:36AM
How long does the process take and does it scale in size? Couldn't find the answer to either of those questions. If the first one isn't fast enough and if it doesn't scale up to industrial levels then it might still be nice but at the same time close to worthless, or a lot less valuable at least.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:17PM (3 children)
Rare earth elements aren't actually rare. Excluding the radioactive ones, which obviously nobody puts in their electronics, most of them are about as rare as tin. There are plenty of them available to mine in North America.
That doesn't make better recycling technology bad, of course. As with all natural resources, the correct strategy is, and will always be, "all of the above."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2020, @04:22PM (1 child)
Recovering previously mined minerals is virtually always superior to having to mine more. Fortunately, because of the conservation of mass, there's nothing you can do to destroy them, the best you can do is react them in a way that's difficult to undo. With the obvious exception of radioactive atoms and those that are purposefully split.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Saturday July 18 2020, @05:57PM
"Recovering previously mined minerals is virtually always superior to having to mine more."
Usually. But if the elements are used as small amounts in alloys or as dopants as is often the case with rare earths, there's often too much other stuff to make it worthwhile to do it just for the rare earths. The trick is to get recycling the bulk material economical enough that it makes sense to recover the small amounts of the minority materials as a side process.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday July 19 2020, @02:58PM
There are indeed plenty of them. The problem with "rare earths" is not that the elements themselves are rare, but that *concentrations* of them are rare. If you want to mine iron or tin, you go looking for strata of rock that's rich in iron or tin (usually as oxides). Then much of the material you're removing from the ground, is actually the material you're trying to acquire.
Rare earths in contrast rarely concentrate into easily mine-able veins of ore, instead they're diffused through the rock in low concentration, even in "rich" deposits, so that you have to mine a massive amount of rock and then extract the small amount of material you're after. Or quite likely extract a bunch of different rare earths to make the extraction process more cost effective. And even then, it's usually only cost effective if you're processing the "by-catch" that was already dug out of the ground while following a vein of some more profitable element.