Behavior of dialysis for the rare earth elements in cationic membranes

In this work it is presented a dialysis process as an alternative method for the fractionation of rare earth elements. The used cell was set up with a transparent Pyrex glass cylinder with the membrane set in one extreme and using another glass chamber to collect the dialyzed solute. Cationic Membrane: NafionR 324 manufactured by Dupont and IonacR MC-3470XL from Sybron Chemicals were used. A series of exploratory experiments allowed concluding that there was some different behavior as function of the nature of the rare earth solutions, i.e, whether the solutions contained nitrate, sulfate or chloride. (author)