Rare earth metals. Production, use and recycling

In 1964, the nitrogen chemical plant in Piesteritz near Wittenberg opened to produce rare earth elements (REE), however only five of them were used in industry and technology. The predominant rest was placed in storage. Today, 50 years later, the five REE are starting to become a scarce commodity while the others are in stable demand. The reason for the sudden REE boom is a result of their unique optical and magnetic properties, which derive from their electron configuration of the 4f-orbitals. New applications for REE evolved in areas which nobody considered (or ''would have considered/thought about'') 50 years ago. Some examples include power generation in wind energy plants, high density information transfer in fibre optics or medical diagnoses by magnetic resonance tomography. Furthermore, common mobile electrical drive engineering would not be reasonable without REE. The electric vehicles of the future rely on REE for their La and Nd containing NiMH accumulators. The book at hand focuses on all common and emerging applications, the physical and chemical principles are also shown and discussed. The detailed knowledge of these principles is essential in order to create new approaches which allow for the substitution of REE and, where this is not possible, to establish concepts for economical consumption or recycling. With escalating scarcity of the REE this will be of increasing importance on the agenda of science and technology. Thus, recycling methods and concepts are the second focus of this book. The central goal is the incorporation of all existing chemical procedures into the recycling of 'end of life' products. This involves methods from the primary production of the materials up to the conservation of residual materials at the point of manufacturing. Several case examples are described to emphasize that the feasibility of this idea requires organized collecting systems and disassembly of the scrap electronic devices. A comparison between traditional ore mining and urban mining is shown in the example of hot chlorination. In addition to the physical and chemical properties of the different REE applications, the toxicological and ecotoxic particularities are discussed. Even though the REE have only a tiny toxicological potential, they are ecologically alarming in relation to ore washing and medical procedures (contrast agents).