“…Because of the possibility to form water-free complexes with the rare-earth ions, dipivaloylmethane (Hthd) is a much better extracting reagent (Sweet and Parlett, 1968). The synergism in the extraction of trivalent rare-earth ions has been studied by many workers (Healy, 1961a(Healy, , 1961bYoshida, 1966;Scribner and Kotecki, 1965;Shigematsu et al, 1966Shigematsu et al, , 1967Shigematsu et al, , 1969bShigematsu et al, , 1970.…”