Comparison of Usefulness of Four Chelating Agents (EDTA, NTA, ODA and IDA) for the Chromatographic Separation of Micro and Macro Amounts of Rare Earth Elements

Abstract

Literature on the use of four chelating agents namely: ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, nitrilotriacetic acid, diglycolic acid and iminodiacetic acid for the chromatographic separation of micro and macro amounts of rare earth elements was critically reviewed and supplemented with some new unpublished data from our Laboratory. Advantages and disadvantages of ion exchange chromatography both in cation and anion mode as well as ion interaction chromatography techniques, which were used for rare earth elements separation, are discussed. The usefulness of some of the chromatographic systems for micro–macro separations was discussed and demonstrated. The importance of resilience of the separation method to column overloading in some analytical and larger scale separations was emphasized. The methods described in this article might suit well for recovering of individual lanthanides and yttrium from e-waste and other industrial wastes which were fast accumulating in recent years.

Keywords:

• Chelating agents
• chromatographic separation
• lanthanides
• rare earth elements

Conflict of interests

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

Ethics approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was performed within statutory tasks of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology, Warsaw, Poland.