Diglycolamide phenolic foams as sorbent for rare earth elements

ABSTRACT

In this present study, we developed a new series of sorbents based on phenolic foam resin for the extraction of rare earth elements. Chelating phenolic foams were prepared using appropriate formulation of blowing agent, surfactant and curing acid agent and a prepolymer resulting from an alkaline polymerisation reaction of phenolic diglycolamide derivative with admixture of phenol, catechol or resorcinol in the presence of formaldehyde as crosslinker agent. The foaming copolymer resins were completely described and engaged in sorption studies with three types of lanthanide (La, Eu, Yb), which represent light, medium and heavy REEs, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Phenolic foam
• sorbents materials
• diglycolamide
• Rare-earth elements
• liquid-solid extraction

Data sharing statement

Electronic supplementary information is provided for this study. The raw/processed data required to reproduce these findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge B. Baus-Lagarde, F. Giusti and C. Rey for technical support, the Algerian government and the Labex Project CheMISyst (ANR-10-LABX-05-01) for the financial support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

Includes no funding.