Recent Advances in Metal Separations and Recovery

A special issue of Separations (ISSN 2297-8739). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Separations".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 February 2023) | Viewed by 2756

Special Issue Editor

Institute of Environmental Radioactivity, Fukushima University, Fukushima 960-1296, Japan
Interests: radiochemistry; environmental remediation; waste management; selective separation; molecular recognition technology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Metals and metalloids are ubiquitous, while the environmental contents of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) have increased from anthropogenic activities. Analytical techniques are designed to analyze PTEs in environmental matrices precisely. However, a clean-up/separation step is often recommended before the analytical determination of PTEs in effluent or industrial wastewaters, considering the heterogeneous distribution of the analytes or complex nature of the environmental matrices.

Metal separation and recovery are also gaining increased research attention to handle the electronic wastes (e-waste) that have become the foremost solid waste stream in recent years. The comparatively short life spans of electronic gadgets plus concerns for energy sovereignty and climate change create a rapid increase in the demand for tech metals and rare earth elements, even though the supply chain curb is often stuck in global politics. Therefore, the race is on to devise techniques for re-procuring the technology metals from e-waste, commonly termed ‘urban mining.’

In the current Special Issue, we welcome contributions from researchers dealing with developing separation and recovery approaches from analytical or waste management perspectives.

Dr. Ismail Md. Mofizur Rahman
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Separations is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • metal separations
  • metal recovery
  • metal removal
  • waste processing
  • analytical applications
  • wastewater treatment
  • 3R (reduce, reuse & recycle)
  • technology metals
  • precious metals
  • rare earth elements
  • rare metals

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Review

45 pages, 3584 KiB  
Review
The State of Critical and Strategic Metals Recovery and the Role of Nuclear Techniques in the Separation Technologies Development: Review
by Nelson R. Kiprono, Tomasz Smolinski, Marcin Rogowski and Andrzej G. Chmielewski
Separations 2023, 10(2), 112; https://doi.org/10.3390/separations10020112 - 05 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2391
Abstract
The extraction of useful minerals or geological materials from the Earth’s crust, most typically from various sources, is crucial to a country’s development and progress. Mineral-rich countries use these resources to transform their economies and propel them toward long-term prosperity. There is an [...] Read more.
The extraction of useful minerals or geological materials from the Earth’s crust, most typically from various sources, is crucial to a country’s development and progress. Mineral-rich countries use these resources to transform their economies and propel them toward long-term prosperity. There is an urgent need for the world to increase mineral exploration efforts, improve the recycling of important metal-containing resources, and extract them using upgraded hydrometallurgical procedures with high recovery efficiency. This review paper highlights the importance of strategic and critical metals in the economy and the role of nuclear techniques in the analysis, process optimization, and remediation of metals using solvent extraction, adsorption, and chromatographic resins. Radiotracer analysis, X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) are appropriate for improving laboratory-based hydrometallurgical processes, with future technical and economic benefits. The development and installation of novel instruments to provide the real-time control of mining and mineral processing plants for improved control have the potential to aid in the recovery of a broad range of metals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Metal Separations and Recovery)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Back to TopTop