Recovery of rare earth metals through biosorption: An overview

Rare earth metals (REMs) are a series of 17 elements that have widespread and unique applications in high technology, power generation, communications, and defense industries. These resources are also pivotal to emergent sustainable energy and carbon alternative technologies. Recovery of REMs is interesting due to its high market prices along with various industrial applications. Conventional technologies, viz. precipitation, filtration, liquid-liquid extraction, solid-liquid extraction, ion exchange, super critical extraction, electrowinning, electrorefining, electroslag refining, etc., which have been developed for the recovery of REMs, are not economically attractive. Biosorption represents a biotechnological innovation as well as a cost effective excellent tool for the recovery of rare earth metals from aqueous solutions. A variety of biomaterials such as algae, fungi, bacteria, resin, activated carbon, etc., have been reported to serve as potential adsorbents for the recovery of REMs. The metal binding mechanisms, as well as the parameters influencing the uptake of rare earth metals and isotherm modeling are presented here. This article provides an overview of past achievements and current scenario of the biosorption studies carried out using some promising biosorbents which could serve as an economical means for recovering REMs. The experimental findings reported by different workers will provide insights into this research frontier.