title: Technique for enhanced rare earth separation
abstract: A process is demonstrated for the efficient separation of rare earth elements, using a combination of selective reduction and vacuum distillation of halides. The large differences in the redox chemistry of the rare earth elements and in the vapor pressures of rare earth di- and trihalides are exploited for separation. Experimental proof of concept is provided for the binary systems praseodymium-neodymium and neodymium-samarium. This process enhances the separation factor for the isolation of samarium and neodymium from their mixture by more than an order of magnitude.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Metallurgical Process Engineering, Institute for Advanced Materials Processing, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan. Department of Metallurgy, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India.
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Uda
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Jacob
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirasawa