Issue 9, 2019, Issue in Progress
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RSC Advances

Yttrium and europium separation by solvent extraction with undiluted thiocyanate ionic liquids†

Raju Banda,a   Federica Forte, ORCID logo a   Bieke Onghena ORCID logo a  and  Koen Binnemans ORCID logo *a  

* Corresponding authors

a KU Leuven, Department of Chemistry, Celestijnenlaan 200F PO Box 2404, Heverlee, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
E-mail: Koen.Binnemans@kuleuven.be

Abstract

An yttrium/europium oxide obtained by the processing of fluorescent lamp waste powder was separated into its individual elements by solvent extraction with two undiluted ionic liquids, trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium thiocyanate, [C101][SCN], and tricaprylmethylammonium thiocyanate, [A336][SCN]. The best extraction performances were observed for [C101][SCN], by using an organic-to-aqueous volume ratio of 1/10 and four counter-current extraction stages. The loaded organic phase was afterwards subjected to scrubbing with a solution of 3 mol L−1 CaCl2 + 0.8 mol L−1 NH4SCN to remove the co-extracted europium. Yttrium was quantitatively stripped from the scrubbed organic phase by deionized water. Yttrium and europium were finally recovered as hydroxides by precipitation with ammonia and then calcined to the corresponding oxides. The conditions thus defined for an efficient yttrium/europium separation from synthetic chloride solutions were afterwards tested on a leachate obtained from the dissolution of a real mixed oxide. The purity of Y2O3 with respect to the rare-earth content was 98.2%; the purity of Eu2O3 with respect to calcium was 98.7%.

Graphical abstract: Yttrium and europium separation by solvent extraction with undiluted thiocyanate ionic liquids

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C8RA09797F
Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Nov 2018
Accepted
31 Jan 2019
First published
07 Feb 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2019,9, 4876-4883

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Yttrium and europium separation by solvent extraction with undiluted thiocyanate ionic liquids

R. Banda, F. Forte, B. Onghena and K. Binnemans, RSC Adv., 2019, 9, 4876 DOI: 10.1039/C8RA09797F

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