Functionalized Ionic Liquids Based on Vegetable Oils for Rare Earth Elements Recovery

Rare earth elements (La-Lu, Y and Sc) and their compounds are critical materials in computers, audio systems, electric and hybrid vehicles, cell phones, wind turbines, magnetic resonance imaging machines, et al. To extract rare earth metals from aqueous solution is an extremely important topic in the world today and is anticipated to be of even greater future importance due to the increasing demand for these critical metals. Unfortunately, producing rare earths is a problem of economical extraction and always requires using large volumes of environmentally harmful chemicals. In this work, functionalized ionic liquids (FILs) based on vegetable oils have been directly synthesized and used to effectively extract rare earth elements. Carbon dioxide gas is introduced to successfully strip rare-earth-loaded FILs in the presence of water. The novel extraction process reveals great advantages of accessibility, biocompatibility and sustainability as well as cost efficiency.