Rare earth recovery from fluorescent material and associated method
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsDigamber Gurudas Porob, Alok Mani Srivastava, Prasanth Kumar Nammalwar, Gopi Chandran Ramachandran, Holly Ann Comanzo
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Abstract
A method of recovering a rare earth constituent from a phosphor is presented. The method can include a number of steps (a) to (d). In step (a), the phosphor is fired with an alkali material under conditions sufficient to decompose the phosphor into a mixture of oxides. A residue containing rare earth oxides is extracted from the mixture in step (b). In step (c), the residue is treated to obtain a solution, which comprises rare earth constituents in salt form. Rare earth constituents are separated from the solution in step (d).
Claims15
A method of recovering a rare earth constituent from a phosphor, comprising the steps of:
- a) firing the phosphor with an alkali material, under conditions sufficient to decompose the phosphor into a mixture of oxides,
- b) extracting a residue containing rare earth oxides from the mixture,
- c) treating the residue to obtain a solution which comprises the rare earth constituents in salt form, and
- d) separating the rare earth constituents from the solution.
A method of recovering a rare earth constituent from a phosphor, comprising the following steps:
- (i) separating an acid-soluble rare earth oxide from the phosphor,
- (ii) firing the phosphor with an alkali material, after step (i), under conditions sufficient to decompose the phosphor into a mixture which comprises oxide compounds,
- (iii) extracting a residue containing rare earth oxides from the mixture,
- (iv) treating the residue to obtain a solution which comprises the rare earth constituent in salt form, and
- (v) separating the rare earth constituent from the solution obtained in step (iv).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.