Abstract
With promoted use of fluorescent lamps and the increasing amount of fluorescent lamp waste, its phosphors have become an ideal secondary source for critical materials, such as yttrium, europium, and terbium. Conventional recycling processes based on hydrometallurgy rely on a large volume of acids and organic solvents and generate large volumes of hazardous waste. Here, a novel environmentally friendly process based on supercritical fluid extraction was developed to recycle the critical rare-earth elements from waste fluorescent lamps. The proposed process uses supercritical CO2 as the solvent, which is inert, safe, and abundant, along with tributyl-phosphate nitric acid (TBP–HNO3) chelating agent. Rare-earth element extraction efficiencies of 50% was achieved without sample pretreatment. Pretreating samples with mechanical activation (ball milling) for 1 h resulted in a 20% improvement in extraction efficiency. High-resolution transmittance electron microscopy showed that during mechanical activation the sample becomes polycrystalline with nano-sized crystallite size, resulting in enhanced leaching efficiency.
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Zhang, J., Azimi, G. (2020). Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Rare Earth Elements from Waste Fluorescent Lamp. In: Azimi, G., Forsberg, K., Ouchi, T., Kim, H., Alam, S., Baba, A. (eds) Rare Metal Technology 2020. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36758-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36758-9_9
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