Speaker
Renaud Gueroult
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P2.3013.pdf
Plasma separation for rare earth elements recycling
R. Gueroult1 , J.-M. Rax2 , N. J. Fisch3
1 LAPLACE, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, 31062 Toulouse, France
2 Université de Paris XI - Ecole Polytechnique, LOA-ENSTA-CNRS, 91128 Palaiseau, France
3 Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08543 USA
Owing to the great upside potential of plasma separation for nuclear waste cleanup [1] and
nuclear spent fuel reprocessing [2], the last decade has seen a renewed interest in plasmas for
the purpose of separating elements (see, e. g., Refs. [3, 4] and references therein). For these
applications, the mass difference between elements to be separated is typically tens of atomic
mass or more, and large throughput processing is highly desirable. This is in contrast with
plasma isotope separation techniques developed since the 1970s’ [5], which aim at separating
elements separated by at most a few atomic mass and typically have a limited throughput. New
plasma separation mechanisms are thus called for.
In an effort to address this new need, a suite of plasma configurations offering mass differ-
ential confinement properties has been identified in recent years [3, 4]. These concepts rely
on a variety of separation mechanisms (e. g. gyro-orbit, ion drift, mobility) which are each ef-
fective for a particular range of plasma parameters such as magnetization, collisionality and
ionization fraction. It is therefore anticipated that these different concepts will display different
performances with respect to purification and throughput for a given input stream composition.
Yet another promising application for plasma separation is rare earth elements (REEs) re-
cycling [6]. Indeed, it has recently been shown that separating in a plasma the various atoms
found in neodymium - iron - boron (NdFeB) magnets with respect to a threshold atomic mass
mc = 100 amu could in principle allow recovering REEs at a cost comparable to the current
market price of these elements (Nd, Dy). In this talk, we evaluate how different plasma mass
separation concepts proposed to date perform relatively to one another for the particular case of
NdFeB magnets recycling and discuss possible pathways for optimization.
References
[1] R. Gueroult, D. T. Hobbs and N. J. Fisch, J. Hazard. Mater. 297, 153 (2015)
[2] (a) A. V. Timofeev, Sov. Phys. Usp. 57, 990 (2014) (b) R. Gueroult and N. J. Fisch, Plasma Sources Sci.
Technol. 23, 035002 (2014) (c) V. B. Yuferov et al., Prob. Atom. Sci. Tech. 23, 223 (2017)
[3] D. A. Dolgolenko and Yu. A. Muromkin, Phys.-Usp 60, 994 (2017)
[4] R. Gueroult, J.-M. Rax, S. J. Zweben and N. J. Fisch, Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 60, 014018 (2018)
[5] M. W. Grossman and T. A. Shepp, IEEE Trans. Plasma. Sci. 19, 1114 (1991)
[6] R. Gueroult, J.-M. Rax and N. J. Fisch, J. Clean. Prod. 181, 1060 (2018)
