Method for Individual Rare Earth Metals Recycling from Fluorescent Powder E-wastes

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This patent describes a new method for efficiently recycling and purifying individual rare earth elements (REEs) such as yttrium (Y), europium (Eu), terbium (Tb), gadolinium (Gd), lanthanum (La), and cerium (Ce) from fluorescent powder in electronic waste, especially from end-of-life lamps. The process uses a combination of shredding, chemical digestion, and advanced liquid-liquid extraction to obtain these valuable metals in high purities (>99%). It also includes effective management of toxic mercury (Hg) and is designed to be cost-effective, scalable, and applicable to both urban e-waste and mining residues.

Use CasesContent extracted from patent full text and abstract with AI.

• Recycling rare earth metals from discarded fluorescent lamps and lighting equipment in municipal electronic waste streams.
• Supplying high-purity individual rare earths for manufacturers of smart technologies, magnets, green energy devices, and hybrid vehicles.
• Managing and reclaiming rare earth materials from mining tailings and other industrial waste sources.
• Reducing raw material supply risk for critical technologies by generating secondary sources of rare earths within Europe, US, and other markets.
• Safe treatment and removal of toxic mercury from lamp and electronic waste during recycling processes.

BenefitsContent extracted from patent full text and abstract with AI.

• Enables the commercial recovery of individual, high-purity rare earth elements from complex electronic waste streams.
• Provides an economically viable and scalable process for REE recycling, with potential for large-scale industrial adoption.
• Reduces dependence on primary REE mining and helps secure strategic raw materials essential for green and smart technologies.
• Minimizes environmental impact by safely removing mercury and maximizing resource utilization from e-waste.
• Enables reuse of chemical reagents, further lowering waste and operational costs.

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Patent Abstract

A robust and economically viable process technology is developed for the recycling of critical rare earth (REEs) metals from end of life lamp fluorescent powder (FP) e-waste. This is one of the first efforts to recycle invidual pure REEs from municipal e-waste components to arrive at commercially promising individual REEs purity, which are knowingly difficult to separate from wastes. The process technology addresses the management of strategically important REEs resources relevant for green energy and smart/hybrid technology. The methodology involves cheap mineral acid for near quantitative RE metal sequential digestion and extractive (liquid-liquid) separation protocols using the selective extractant ligand molecules and hydrometallurgical process conditions to separate Y, Eu, and Tb, to more than 99% purity and Gd, La and Ce to elevated purities each from the metal digested FP waste fractions. The developed technology has potential for scale up on industrial scale, re-use of extractant and organic phase as well as extended use for recovering RE metals from other e-waste after optimizations. The process can be employed to REE mixtures from e-waste as well as mining tailings origin. The process has the advantage over inseparable combined digested phosphor fractions as well as over inefficient leaching of Tb from LAP phosphor. It is also one of the first attempts to achieve the individual purity of rare earths raw materials from such a complex waste streams. The novel approach proposed herein with judicial choices of extractants and inventive steps of process hydrometallurgy will help to tap potential in e-waste secondary resources.