Separation and concentration of rare earth elements from wastewater using electrodialysis technology

Rare earth elements (REEs) including Scandium (Sc) are critical raw materials which greatly needed in the advancement of many modern technologies. Due to problems associated with primary extraction mining ores, procurement Sc and REEs from secondary resources currently explored adopting principle sustainability circular economy. Herein, for first time, Electrodialysis (ED) technology based on electrochemical membrane separation process is successfully applied separate concentrate diluted aqueous system. The overall performance ED recovery Sc3+ ions wastewater was assessed by current, voltage, feed concentration, pH, co-ion competition energy consumption process. REE using subjected systematic investigations both chronopotentiometric chronoamperometric analyses. results showed that could be very promising (~99.52% removal) wastewater, consuming only 0.26 kWh/m3 when operated at constant voltage mode (Sc3+ concentration 20 ppm, pH 4, 1 h).