Ultrafast flash heating recovers rare earths from electronic waste with 90% yield

“We’ve demonstrated that we can recover rare earth elements from electronic waste in seconds with minimal environmental footprint,” said Tour, the T.T. Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of materials science and nanoengineering, and study corresponding author. Thermodynamics drives selective recoveryThe researchers hypothesized that FJH combined with chlorine gas could exploit differences in Gibbs free energy and boiling points to selectively remove non-REE elements from magnet waste. In practice, iron, cobalt, and other non-REE elements chlorinate and vaporize first, leaving behind the REE oxides. The team tested this on neodymium iron boron and samarium cobalt magnet waste.