French-American chemist makes major breakthrough in recycling of rare earths • FRANCE 24 English

wind turbines, smartphones, drones, electric cars, and even missiles. All relying on rare earth elements. They’re vital for the global economy and the green transition. But as demand rises, resources are fast depleting. Mining them is not only expensive, it’s highly polluting. and only 1% are currently recycled. Outside Paris, this company collects all kinds of waste, including electronic appliances. Some are brand new. We truly live in a consumer society. Waste is sorted and sent for recycling. From cardboard to gold, nothing goes to waste except rare earth elements. They’re in smartphones, computer screens, and you can also find them in motherboards and in memory chips. [Music] The company says the highly coveted minerals trapped in these appliances don’t have a buyer. Extracting them from smartphones isn’t financially viable. Recovering a small amount of rare earth elements from equipment like this is very complex and expensive. There’s an interest in doing it, but the cost of recycling is too high. [Music] But perhaps not for long. As Europe and the US race to break China’s strangle hold over the precious minerals, more than 60% of the world’s rare earth elements are mined in China. This French American chemist based in Zurich says we’re sitting on a pile of unexploited minerals. These light bulbs are extremely rich and rare earth elements, including one called europium, known for its luminescent properties. When you shine a UV light on the bulbs, they get a reddish pink hue. This bin right here is a treasure trove of rare earths. Each bulb contains up to 20 times more europium than natural minerals. Made with mercury, they’re labeled as toxic waste and destined to be landfilled. It’s a huge waste of resources. [Music] Europium, scandium, or atrium. A group of 17 metals with unique magnetic, optical, and electronic properties. They’re actually abundant throughout the Earth’s crust, only highly dispersed in low concentrations and blended together, making them difficult to mine and separate. Producing one ton of rare earths generates at least 2,000 tons of toxic waste, including radioactive material. At just 28 years old, Marip has made a major breakthrough in efforts to recycle rare earth elements without any toxic waste. The young scientist had no intention of extracting the crucial minerals, but made the unexpected discovery while trying to make fertilizers in her lab using sulfur. This was quite counterintuitive from a chemist point of view because rare earth elements don’t necessarily interact with sulfur molecules, but we realize that they do interact and that sulfur can break rare earth elements apart. A light bulb is just a glass tube with phosphor powder. And this white powder contains rare earth elements like europium. Now this liquid is our extracting solution made with metal and sulfur. We’re going to add a mix of rare earth elements which are commonly found in light bulbs. One rare earth element will crystallize and turn solid while the other remains trapped in the liquid solution. An almost instant chemical reaction. You can see the separation quite clearly commonly used in the prochemical industry. Sulfur molecules had never been applied to rare earth elements until now. We can achieve 90% purity of rare earth oxide in a single step compared to thousands of steps using industrial products currently on the market. The entire process could be achieved in a single container. She says installed within the premises of manufacturing and recycling companies. Radical break with current practices which remain slow, energyintensive and highly polluting.

Rare earth elements, which are crucial for the defence, auto and electronic industries, have become a geopolitical battleground. On Wednesday, the EU unveiled a €3 billion plan to curb its dependence on China for rare earths, since Beijing controls 95 percent of the world’s supply. But a young French-American scientist has developed a groundbreaking process for recovering rare earths from neon light bulbs and potentially other electronic appliances, paving the way for the recycling of these essential metals. Our Down to Earth team reports.
#DowntoEarth #Environment #RareEarthElements

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/BbfG.y

🔔 Subscribe to France 24 now: https://f24.my/YTen
🔴 LIVE – Watch FRANCE 24 English 24/7 here: https://f24.my/YTliveEN

🌍 Read the latest International News and Top Stories: https://www.france24.com/en/

Like us on Facebook: https://f24.my/FBen
Follow us on X: https://f24.my/Xen
Bluesky: https://f24.my/BSen and Threads: https://f24.my/THen
Browse the news in pictures on Instagram: https://f24.my/IGen
Discover our TikTok videos: https://f24.my/TKen
Get the latest top stories on Telegram: https://f24.my/TGen

49 comments

  1. The problem is not processing of rare earths, but processing them at a cost that is cheaper than Chinese rare earths.

  5. I mean this is just the start. China needs a competition for rare earth processing. More countries doing this means advancement for processing so hopefully in the future we find a way to process rare earth on a cleaner way.

  6. Globally, europium production is relatively low, estimated around 100-400 tonnes per year.
    Europium is a chemical element, and for $3 billion, one could purchase around 5 million kilograms (5,000 metric tons)
    3 billion to RESEARCH a way to get very little back from neon lights ONLY.
    Economic insanity.

  10. Recovering the Rare Earth elements is simple compared to the challenge of refining them to the 99.9% purity needed for components.

  12. This is huge news and I encourage anyone with money to invest in any company that plans to develop a system based with this process for recycling rare earth minerals

  18. 2:31 – "destined to… LANDFILLED"? Are you d*mb as sh!t or just "intellectually challenged"? Because they contain mercury they CAN'T be thrown into a landfill, as this would RELEASE all that mercury into environment!
    They are crushed – in a controlled settings, in a recycling works – and mercury is recovered. And flushing out this "phosphorus" from crushed glass is rather simple and straightforward process, and while I don't know whether it's done or not there isn't any "serious challenge" involving it – and once someone finds it profitable this will be done (albeit there isn't that much of these tubes left out there to recycle, these have been phased out years ago – so this whole idea is kinda "mustard [served] AFTER a dinner" so to speak.

  25. Lol this isn’t breakthrough…we call it day dreaming 😂😂..you think this can compete with china in terms of rare earth elements production…this will make the costly electric equipments even more expensive…let’s see if profit driven private companies will move and approve this breakthrough 🤣🤣🤣

  26. Just a quick public service announcement: the United States actually has all the rare-earth elements we need right here at home, locked inside the millions of tons of coal ash produced over decades of power generation. Coal ash is rich in strategically important elements like neodymium, dysprosium, yttrium, and others essential for everything from fighter jets to smartphones to electric vehicle motors. The challenge isn’t the resource — it’s building the domestic processing capacity to extract these elements efficiently and in an environmentally responsible way. Current extraction methods can be messy and energy-intensive, so the real breakthrough will come from designing cleaner, scalable systems that can turn this waste stream into a reliable supply chain that doesn't rely on China. It’s absolutely achievable, and far safer than continuing to depend on foreign suppliers for materials that are now tightly tied to both our national defense and our high-tech industries.

  30. Step 1: Treat China with respect and negotiate win-win trade deals. Step 2: Mandate manufacturing processes which make products easier to recycle. Step 3: Promote higher education and fund scientific research. Step 4: Control the human population so less rare-earth elements are needed. Or do what the US is doing now: the opposite of all the above.

  32. Humans are stupid. If we move to a hydrogen infrastructure then we don’t need rare earth minerals for transportation and electrical generation.

  36. THE MOST IMPORTANT COMMENT: These reporters could be bullshitting us, as I red a few months back, that China discovered how to extract it, from already mined sites!

  40. Majority of e-waste is to blame manufacturers themselves. Because of their anti right to repair practices, lots of electronics are unrepairable by consumer

  43. I know this man very well. He is Christian havard professeur. He had established 27 companies and hold all patents, also for this.

  47. Recycling is absolute key in globalized economy. It lowers environmental damage AND prevents monopolies of rare earths.

  48. 🙄🙄🙄 more useless news, the true breakthrough you westerners are looking for is in the processing and purity refining. You can recycle all you want, might as well straight up enslave Uganda or what not and force them to extract it for yall for scraps of food it still makes no difference

  49. Apple, google etc.. companies must do this recycling. The unorganised sector is doing it now but actually these companies need them more than anyone so they have to do recycle, fund research and create a commercially viable and safe technology to extract them.
    Polluting companies must play important role in this.

Comments are closed.