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I’m Tesfaye Negeri. I’m a senior mineral
processing researcher.
My current research is focused on the development of processes for the separation of rare earth minerals.
Rare earth elements are a very important component
of more than 200 to 220 products across a wide range of applications. They’re found
in virtually all high-technology consumer
products, such as smartphones.
The purpose of this separation is to collect these valued minerals that contain the several
rare earth elements into a smaller amount
of mass.
In flotation, what we do is grind the material into the finest, so the particles are independent
of one another or liberated from each other. Then we mix that with water, adjust the pH
and add two or three types of agents or chemicals. One set of chemicals makes the minerals with
no value to be depressed, and the other set of chemicals makes the minerals of value to
get attached to the bubbles when we pass air through the system and float to the surface,
which is then skimmed off as foam.
In other cases, where minerals have magnetic
characteristics that are different, then we
can apply magnetic force at different intensities
to capture different amounts of minerals.
The challenge of separating these minerals
is very high, and when you get a method or a procedure by which you can separate them
and achieve higher recovery and better
quality concentrate that is what keeps you going.
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