Chromatographic column separation of rare earth elements by resorcinol formaldehyde cationic exchanger resin

Abstract EN

Due to increase use of rare earth elements (REEs) in modern technology in the world over the past years, alternative separation method is essentially requested.

Therefore, the main objective of this study is oriented to find efficient process for individual separation of light REEs from each other using resorcinol formaldehyde organic resin.

In this investigation different type of elue nt namely, oxalic acid, sodium hexameta phosphate and hydrazine have been tested for separation process of REEs.

Optimizations of some parameters that affect on separation of REEs such as eluent concentration, flow rate and bed height of column have been performed.

The results indicated that, 0.08M of hydrazine as novel eluent at 1ml/min is efficient for individual separation of REEs.

Thus the improved successfully the separation process that more efficiently recovers the economically valuable REEs.

The preliminary investigation has given promising results for lanthanides separation and production using resorcinol formaldehyde resin as stationary phase and hydrazine as novel eluent.