Rare and Strategic Metals

Fouquet, Yves; Martel-Jantin, Bruno

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8563-1_3

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…LCA has been used to study the environmental impact of energy technologies such as electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, etc. (Samaras and Meisterling, 2008;Martinez et al, 2009;Tremeac and Meunier, 2009;Garrett and Rønde, 2013;Lizin et al, 2013). ISO 14040 and 14044 developed by the International Standards Organization provide principles and guidelines for evaluating environmental impacts of products using LCA (Suh and Huppes, 2005;Finkbeiner et al, 2006;ISO, 2006;Ness et al, 2007).…”

Section: Overview Of Life-cycle Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many LCIA methodologies have been developed, e.g., CML, Eco-indicator, ReCiPe, and TRACI (Hischier et al, 2010). These methodologies may classify environmental impacts into different categories and the common impact categories considered include global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical smog, fossil fuel depletion, mineral depletion, terrestrial/aquatic toxicity, human health risks, land use, and water use (Garrett and Rønde, 2013;Adibi et al, 2014). The category indicator results can be further normalized, grouped, and weighted to derive a single score of environmental performance.…”

Section: Life-cycle Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Life-Cycle Assessment of the Production of Rare-Earth Elements for Energy Applications: A Review

2014

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Rare-earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 elements with similar chemical properties, including 15 in the lanthanide group, yttrium, and scandium. Due to their unique physical and chemical properties, REEs gain increasing importance in many new energy technologies and systems that contribute to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel depletion (e.g., wind turbine, electric vehicles, high efficiency lighting, batteries, and hydrogen storage). However, it is well known that production of REEs is far from environmentally sustainable as it requires significant material and energy consumption while generating large amounts of air/water emissions and solid waste. Although life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been accepted as the most comprehensive approach to quantify the environmental sustainability of a product or process, to date, there have been only very limited LCA studies on the production of REEs. With the continual growth of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies, global production of REEs will increase. Therefore, reducing environmental footprints of REE production becomes critical and identifying environmental hotspots based on a holistic and comprehensive assessment on environmental impacts serves as an important starting point. After providing an overview of LCA methodology and a high-level description of the major REE production routes used from 1990s to today, this paper reviews the published LCA studies on the production of REEs. To date, almost all the LCA studies are based on process information collected from the operation of Mountain Pass facility in U.S. in 1990s and the operation of facilities in Bayan Obo, China. Knowledge gaps are identified and future research efforts are suggested to advance understanding on environmental impacts of REE production from the life-cycle perspective.

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Section: Overview Of Life-cycle Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Life-cycle Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-Cycle Assessment of the Production of Rare-Earth Elements for Energy Applications: A Review

2014

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“…The demand for rare earth elements (REEs) has increased rapidly due to their diverse applications in many industries [1][2][3][4][5]. Although the global reserves for rare earths were estimated as 130 million metric tons [6], finding highly concentrated rare earth deposits for economically viable extraction processes remain a challenge [7,8]. Hence, to meet the demand, extracting rare earths from alternative sources has gained significance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separation of Radionuclides from a Rare Earth-Containing Solution by Zeolite Adsorption

Talan

Huang

2020

Minerals

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The increasing industrial demand for rare earths requires new or alternative sources to be found. Within this context, there have been studies validating the technical feasibility of coal and coal byproducts as alternative sources for rare earth elements. Nonetheless, radioactive materials, such as thorium and uranium, are frequently seen in the rare earths’ mineralization, and causes environmental and health concerns. Consequently, there exists an urgent need to remove these radionuclides in order to produce high purity rare earths to diversify the supply chain, as well as maintain an environmentally-favorable extraction process for the surroundings. In this study, an experimental design was generated to examine the effect of zeolite particle size, feed solution pH, zeolite amount, and contact time of solid and aqueous phases on the removal of thorium and uranium from the solution. The best separation performance was achieved using 2.50 g of 12-µm zeolite sample at a pH value of 3 with a contact time of 2 h. Under these conditions, the adsorption recovery of rare earths, thorium, and uranium into the solid phase was found to be 20.43 wt%, 99.20 wt%, and 89.60 wt%, respectively. The Freundlich adsorption isotherm was determined to be the best-fit model, and the adsorption mechanism of rare earths and thorium was identified as multilayer physisorption. Further, the separation efficiency was assessed using the response surface methodology based on the development of a statistically significant model.

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Life Cycle Analysis for Solvent Extraction of Rare Earth Elements from Aqueous Solutions

Vahidi¹,

Zhao²

2016

Rewas 2016: Towards Materials Resource Sustainability

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Rare and Strategic Metals

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Life-Cycle Assessment of the Production of Rare-Earth Elements for Energy Applications: A Review

Life-Cycle Assessment of the Production of Rare-Earth Elements for Energy Applications: A Review

Separation of Radionuclides from a Rare Earth-Containing Solution by Zeolite Adsorption

Life Cycle Analysis for Solvent Extraction of Rare Earth Elements from Aqueous Solutions

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