Recovery of Rare Earths, Precious Metals and Other Critical Materials from Geothermal Waters with Advanced Sorbent Structures

The work evaluates, develops and demonstrates flexible, scalable mineral extraction technology for geothermal brines based upon solid phase sorbent materials with a specific focus upon rare earth elements (REEs). The selected organic and inorganic sorbent materials demonstrated high performance for collection of trace REEs, precious and valuable metals. The nanostructured materials typically performed better than commercially available sorbents. Data contains organic and inorganic sorbent removal efficiency, Sharkey Hot Springs (Idaho) water chemistry analysis, and rare earth removal efficiency from select sorbents. The Sharkley Hot Springs water chemistry presented includes spiked levels of REEs.