Recovery of rare earth metals from Ni-MH batteries: A comprehensive review

Hossein Salehi, Samane Maroufi, Sajjad S. Mofarah, Rasoul Khayyam Nekouei and Veena Sahajwalla

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2023, vol. 178, issue C

Abstract: The recycling of nickel-metal hydride batteries (NiMHBs) has garnered significant attention in recent years due to the growing demand for critical metals and the implementation of national and international legislation aimed at achieving zero carbon emissions and reducing environmental impact. Typically, NiMHBs contain 10 wt% of rare earth elements (REEs) including La, Ce, Nd, and Pr. However, the majority of these REEs (>90%) are being discarded in landfills each year. The scarcity of these metals and the concentrated distribution of their ore deposits in only a few countries have prompted significant concern globally. One of the existing strategies to address this issue is extraction of REEs through urban mining. This study provides an in-depth fundamental and systematic review on the existing strategies and technologies for the recovery of REEs from spent NiMHBs. Further, the state-of-the-art approaches for the individual separation of La, Ce, Nd, and Pr from aqueous media are discussed, along with their corresponding challenges and shortcomings as well as the potential future directions. The research aims to provide a transformative understanding of various methods for the recovery of REEs from NiMHBs, the available techniques for the individual separation of REEs from different secondary resources, and potential improvements in the recycling process of spent NiMHBs. The outcome of this work will contribute to the development of more efficient and effective REEs recovery methods and help address the growing concern of REEs scarcity and extraction environmental impact.

Keywords: Electronic waste; Individual separation; Solvent extraction; Ionic liquids; Molten slag extraction; Nickel-metal hydride battery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032123001041
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:178:y:2023:i:c:s1364032123001041

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2023.113248

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().