Current Research Trends for Recovery of Rare Earth Elements Contained in Coal Ash

Abstract

This study aims to introduce and review on the recovery technologies of rare earth elements(REEs) from coal ash. Many researchers have been carried out by various beneficiation processes, such as particle size separation, magnetic separation, specific gravity, and flotation to recover rare earth elements from coal ash generated from Pulverized Coal(PC) boiler. Through the beneficiation process, it was confirmed that concentration of rare earth elements was much lower than the 4,700 ppm, and that additional enrichment treatment through wet process was needed for the products recovered after the beneficiation process. It was confirmed that the rare earth elements contained in coal ash were applied to the leaching process after pretreatment such as alkali-fusion to improve leaching efficiency. Although beneficiation and leaching methods have been studied, its optimum recovery technologies for rare earth elements not been confirmed up to now, research on the recovery of rare earth contained in coal ash is reported to continue. In case of Korea, the technology for the recovery of rare earth elements from coal ash and coal by-product could not been confirmed up to present. In these reasons, it is urgent to develop technologies such as beneficiation and leaching process continuously.