Abstract
The emerging use of scandium and the environmental impact from scandium-containing waste is a rising environmental and health concern. With the development of new materials in the last decade, toxicological studies on those new materials have also been increasing. An example of a process which employs scandium is the generation of metallic nitride fullerene nanomaterials. This process typically generates 99+% scandium waste, as only small amounts of scandium are actually incorporated into the target fullerene molecules. We demonstrate a safe method to recover the scandium content in the waste, reuse the recovered material and successfully demonstrate a comparable product distribution without detectable health and environmental concerns.
Acknowledgments
The Office of Naval Research, NSF CAREER/EPSCOR, Bimolecular Processes (CHE-0547988), the Department of Education GAANN Fellowship Award #P200A060323, and the Lucas Research Foundation are gratefully acknowledged for financial support.