Solvent extraction with a three-dimensional reticulated hollow-strut SiC foam microchannel reactor

Recently, there has been considerable interest in the use of microchannel reactors for hydrometallurgy of rare earths (REs). Here, a novel integrated microchannel reactor based on the hollow-strut SiC foam material is presented and demonstrated to extract Ce 3+ and Pr 3+ using 2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid mono-2-ethylhexyl ester (P507) as the extractant. The typical three-dimensional reticulated structure of the hollow-strut SiC foam was characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray micro computed tomography. Since the reactor’s structure plays a key role in fluid mixing and mass diffusion during the extraction process, the structure-performance relationship of the foam was studied by extraction experiments combined with numerical simulations. Using the foam with the optimal structure, the influence of the flow rate Q 0 of the two liquid phases on the extraction efficiency η and overall volume mass transfer coefficient K L a was discussed. For both RE ions, with increasing Q 0 , η decreases while K L a increases. For the total flow rate of the two phases of 4 ml⋅min −1 , the η values of Pr 3+ and Ce 3+ reached 98.7% and 97.0%, respectively. For the total flow rate of 36 ml⋅min −1 which was much higher than that of many other microchannel reactors reported in the literatures, the η values of Pr 3+ and Ce 3+ still reached 92.2% and 86.9%, respectively, and the K L a values of Pr 3+ and Ce 3+ were 0.198 and 0.161 s −1 , respectively, similar to the high values reported for other microchannel reactors studied in previous work. These findings indicate that the hollow-strut SiC foam microchannel reactor is suitable for use in REs extraction.