Inspired by Nature
Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are a group of 17 elements (15 lanthanides from Lanthanum to Lutetium, together with Scandium and Yttrium) but they are notoriously hard to extract from the Earth's crust and to separate from one another because of their similar chemical properties. Although previously considered non-essential for life, scientists have demonstrated the essential role of REEs in methanotrophic life within volcanic mudpots. Inspired by this, recent studies reveal that natural enzymes can selectively bind to REEs, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional solvent-extraction-based separation methods.
While this brings hope for the futur, these technologies are hardly scalable and showcase low separation factors (<100). On the other hand, while still looking at natural systems we took inspiration from sulfur rich metallofactors to design our process. For the first time, we report metal-based extractant to selectively separate REEs from one another, achieving selective separation from energy-saving lamps under ambient conditions with separation factors over 1000 and recovery efficiency as high as 99%.
