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
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”
Chinese policies toward rare earths, 1975-2018 Review of original Chinese documents, along with contemporaneous assessments of global rare earth markets and overall Chinese industrial policies