Adsorption of rare earth elements in regolith-hosted clay deposits

Anouk Borst; Martin Smith; Adrian Finch; Guillaume Estrade; Cristina Villanova-De-Benavent; Peter Nason; Eva Marquis; Nicola Horsburgh; Kathryn M. Goodenough; Cheng Xu; Jindrich Kynicky; Kalotina Geriaki

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17801-5

Adsorption of rare earth elements in regolith-hosted clay deposits

Anouk Borst, Martin Smith, Adrian Finch, Guillaume Estrade, Cristina Villanova-De-Benavent, Peter Nason, Eva Marquis, Nicola Horsburgh, Kathryn M. Goodenough, Cheng Xu, Jindrich Kynicky, Kalotina Geriaki

Past Human and Environment Dynamics Research Excellence Group

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Global resources of heavy Rare Earth Elements (REE) are dominantly sourced from Chinese regolith-hosted ion-adsorption deposits in which the REE are inferred to be weakly adsorbed onto clay minerals. Similar deposits elsewhere might provide alternative supply for these high-tech metals, but the adsorption mechanisms remain unclear and the adsorbed state of REE to clays has never been demonstrated in situ. This study compares the mineralogy and speciation of REE in economic weathering profiles from China to prospective regoliths developed on peralkaline rocks from Madagascar. We use synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy to study the distribution and local bonding environment of Y and Nd, as proxies for heavy and light REE, in the deposits. Our results show that REE are truly adsorbed as easily leachable 8- to 9-coordinated outer-sphere hydrated complexes, dominantly onto kaolinite. Hence, at the atomic level, the Malagasy clays are genuine mineralogical analogues to those currently exploited in China.

Original language	English
Article number	4386
Pages (from-to)	1-15
Number of pages	15
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	11
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17801-5
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

rare earth elements
ion adsorption deposits
yttrium
neodymium
Madagascar
China

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Cite this

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Adsorption of rare earth elements in regolith-hosted clay deposits

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Martin Smith

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Adsorption of rare earth elements in regolith-hosted clay deposits

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Martin Smith

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