Rare earths from our electronic waste: a treasure, but to be extracted in the right way

The so-called "Rare Earths", rare elements such as Neodymium, Gadolino, Lutetium and others are essential in the production of semiconductors, transistors, capacitors, solar cells and countless products that have found their function in our common life. These rare earths are present in the electronic circuits that we throw away, sometimes without even evaluating their importance, together with other expensive elements, such as gold, silver, palladium and the same, not trivial in price, copper. In Italy, 385,000 tons of electronic waste were recycled in 2021, approximately 6.46 kg per Italian citizen.

This has led to an active recycling industry of electronic waste, the so-called WEEE, special electronic waste that would otherwise be lost in the environment. A very important industry because, through the recycling of WEEE, we recover strategic materials for which we currently depend on abroad. About 80% of the crude production and 85% of the rare earth refining capacity is in China, so, also from an economic security point of view, it would be useful to have an alternative source. For this reason, the USA, Canada, Australia and even the EU are investing in their extraction and refining, which in any case is expensive and impactful.

One more reason to recover the RAE, but the problem is that often the recycling of these values ​​takes place with the use of dangerous, toxic and polluting substances, such as nitric acid. However, alternative techniques are currently being developed:

• an innovative method is to “illuminate” the circuits with very high intensity light, immersed in a special liquid, causing them to release the rare earths at a temperature of 2900 celsius and then refining the liquid with rare earths;
• another method is to use the specific magnetism of the single elements;
• or other systems require refined chemistry and the use of cellulose.

So let's remember to recycle these objects, indeed we welcome the policy that "Repurchase" of used electronics, because it creates jobs, truly protects the environment and increases the strategic independence of our country.

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The article Rare earths from our electronic waste: a treasure, but to be extracted in the right way comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/terre-rare-dai-nostri-rifiuti-elettronici-un-tesoro-ma-da-estrarre-nel-modo-giusto/ on Sat, 23 Apr 2022 14:38:29 +0000.