Microextractors are known to provide high mass transfer rates for the extraction and separation of rare-earth elements (REEs). High-throughput microextractors are essential for industrial-scale production of REEs, but few practical studies have been conducted to date. In this work, a chaotic advection microextractor, i.e., a three-stage microextractor, was designed and demonstrated to extract Pr(III) and Ce(III) efficiently from nitric acid media at high throughputs by using 2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid-2-ethylhexyl ester (P507) and sulfonated kerosene as an extraction agent and a diluent, respectively. Flow visualization experiments showed that the dispersed phase could be effectively broken into small droplets owing to vortex and recirculation flows. Microextraction experiments performed under optimal extraction conditions indicated that at low throughputs, the concentration ratio D , extraction efficiency E , and separation factor β decreased with an increase in the throughput, whereas at high throughputs, D , E , and β increased with an increase in the throughput. An extraction efficiency close to that of co-current balanced extraction was successfully achieved, even at a high total throughput of 100 mL/min and a rather short residence time of 0.029 s. Thus, the chaotic advection microextractor features a high throughput and high extraction efficiency, which are appropriate for the high-efficiency extraction and separation of REEs.
Counter-current operation has been widely applied to enhance the extraction efficiency for systems with low distribution coefficients, which was hindered in microextraction because viscous force and surface tension dominate over gravity and inertial force. In this study, a novel design of a tube-in-tube microextractor relying on a poly tetra fluoroethylene membrane to construct a stable interface was proposed to conduct continuous counter-current extraction. Extraction kinetics for two systems with different distribution coefficients, membranes with different pore radii, and three flow rate ratios were measured as a function of residence time. For the system that toluene was used to extract 0.06 wt % phenol in water, 4.1 stages of extraction efficiency were achieved at a residence time of 9.8 min. A challenging case study (50 wt % acetone–water–toluene) was subsequently conducted to prove the high applicability for emulsion systems of this special microextractor. Lastly, a mathematical model was established and the predicted results of three flow rate ratios are in good agreement with experimental results.
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