Orenburg state university

OSU graduates studied a new way to extract rare earth element

Kamila Emelyanova and Diana Torgashova, graduates from OSU Faculty of Chemistry and Biology have explored an efficient way to extract cerium — one of the most demanded rare metals.

“Rare earth elements are used in different industries like metallurgy, electronics, optics, medicine, clean energy, aerospace industry, automotive industry, and aviation. It is hard to extract rare metals because it's almost impossible to find them as a concentrate. In most cases they are collateral elements in minerals and ores” — said Kamila.

Together with Elena Salnikova, Chief of OSU Chemistry Department, the students have been researching the processes of rare metals extraction from the third year of their studies at the university. They have focused the research on cerium.

“Cerium is the only element that is able to form stable solutions, and there were no intensive studies on it. So that's why we've chosen cerium for our research” — commented Diana Torgashova.

“In fact, these metals are not really rare; their total reserves are bigger than of many other elements but it is hard to find them in as separate minerals. Our graduates were the first to suggest using mixtures of ethylhexyl phosphonic acid and tributyl phosphate to extract rare earth elements from acid (nitrate and sulfuric) environment. The research findings demonstrated the efficiency of using these mixtures to extract rare earth elements,” — noted Elena Salnikova.