Critical Materials Innovation Hub Research Highlights

Improved flotation of bastnaesite from ore promises greater rare earth output from mines

CMI researchers at Colorado School of Mines and Oak Ridge National Laboratory tested locked-cycle novel flotation collectors and recovered up to 78 percent of earth oxide with REO grades up to 69 percent

Forward-osmosis technology concentrates lithium chloride, enabling recovery from geothermal brine

CMI research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on energy-efficient concentration of lithium chloride recovered from geothermal brine

Ce-based gap magnets match high-temperature performance of neo

CMI research at Ames Laboratory Achievement showed that at certain temperatures a cerium-based magnet matches the energy product of and exceeds the coercivity of neodymium permanent magnets

High performance magnet: Refractory metal and Fe-alloyed Ce2Co17

CMI research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used first principles calculations to find large uniaxial magnetic anisotropy with magnetizations

Additive manufacturing NdFeB bonded magnets reach the gap magnet milestone

High-performance critical-element-free permanent magnets

CMI research at Ames Laboratory demonstrated that mechanochemical preprocessing is beneficial for nitrogen insertion/topotactic extraction

Lower-cost commercial grade Ce enhances performance and reduces cost in gap magnets

CMI research with lower-cost commercial grade cerium enhances performance and reduces cost in gap magnets. Also, the less costly “dirty” cerium samples showed as much as a 5% increase of both coercivity and magnetization, resulting in better energy product. 

CMI research on cover of journal: Sustainable urban mining of critical elements from magnet and electronic wastes

Journal publication on the acid-free leaching process for recycling rare-earth elements and cobalt from waste magnet and e-waste materials is published and highlighted as a supplementary cover in ACS high impact journal

Optimized shredding conditions enables improvement in leaching time for REEs in end-of-life hard disk drives (HDDs)

A HDD shredder designed to result in optimally shredded feedstock for acid-free dissolution and also minimize the amount of magnets attached to the cutters during shredding has been commissioned. Consequently, only ~60% of the original leaching time is required and a dissolution efficiency of ≥72% wt.% was obtained for HDDs.

Mines graduate research in biogeochemistry

Olivia Salmon earned master of science degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Mines, December 2020. Thesis: “Impacts of Rare Earth Elements on Biological Wastewater Treatment Processes”