Recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) from industrial wastewater has drawn great attention due to their potential environmental toxicity, as well as their high demand for modern technologies. In 2016, a research group of Prof. Dichtel William from Cornell University reported the first permanently microporous high surface area β-CD polymer, named P-CDP (Nature, 2016). P-CDP showed the rapid removal of organic micropollutants, Pb ions, and sulfides from the water with high adsorption capacities. However, the ability of P-CDP to remove REEs from the water was still unknown.

Now the research group lead by Prof. YU Chang-Ping from the Institute of Urban Environment (IUE), Chinese Academy Sciences (CAS), report the synthesis of a magnetic composite based on P-CDP, namely P-CDP@Fe₃O₄. The developed composite and P-CDP demonstrate the promising results for the pollution control and recovery of REEs. To achieve that, they combined P-CDP’s reagents and Fe₃O₄ via a one-step preparation method. Then they examined the ability of P-CDP and P-CDP@Fe₃O₄ to recover REEs from water using the model and industrial wastewater matrices. Although the researchers were able to reveal the behavior of P-CDP and P-CDP@Fe₃O₄ toward REEs, they are still working hard to see how they can increase their adsorption capacities.

The research published in Journal of Water Research. A Ph.D. student NKINAHAMIRA Francois is the first author of this paper. Prof. SUN Qian is the corresponding author. Dr. Alsbaiee Alaaeddin from the department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, and Dr. FENG Meiling from State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences made significant contributions to this work. The study is sponsored by the FJIRSM&IUE Joint Research Fund (No. RHZX-2018-005), Science and Technology Program of Xiamen (3502Z20182005), Chinese Academy of Sciences-The World Academy of Sciences (CAS-TWAS) president’s fellowship program for developing countries, and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2016280).

A graphical representation of P-CDP@Fe₃O₄ and its application to recover REEs from wastewater