Recovery of rare earth elements with ionic liquids

Abstract

Rare earth elements (REEs) are in high demand as critical materials in modern green and other advanced technologies. This review focuses on the recovery of REEs from waste with ionic liquids (ILs) as green dilutants and extractants to tackle the REE supply challenge. Extraction mechanisms in different extraction systems, including pure ILs, non-functional ILs with extractants, and functional ILs, are discussed in depth. The IL-based extraction process is different from the traditional molecular solvent-based extraction process. In addition, stripping is crucial to recovering ILs, and supercritical CO₂ (Sc-CO₂) is introduced to recover REE complexes from the IL phase. Also, Sc-CO₂ can accelerate the whole extraction process by enhancing mass transfer. The challenge is to understand the extraction mechanism of the IL/Sc-CO₂ system to advance the green recovery of REEs from waste.