World of Metallurgy ERZMETALL 68 2015 No 3 131 Economics Technology and Science Personals and yttrium from collected fluorescent lamps and low energy light bulbs Their method recycles the red lamp phos phor as a whole to reuse the powder in lamps For other applications how ever it is necessary to separate euro pium and yttrium from the rare earth mixture Separating the two rare earth elements is a complicated process Professor Tom Van Gerven from the Department of Chemical Engineering explains The traditional method dis solves europium and yttrium in aque ous acid An extractant and a solvent are then added to the aqueous liquid leading to two separate layers known as phases an aqueous layer contain ing the rare earth metals and a solvent layer with the extractant When the two layers come into contact one of the two rare earth metals is extract ed to the solvent while the other rare earth metal remains in the aqueous layer But this process leaves much to be desired in terms of efficiency and purity it needs to be repeated dozens of times to recover a high percentage of a particular rare earth metal and there will still be traces of yttrium in the europium containing liquid and vice versa In collaboration with KU Leuven chemists the researchers have now managed to recover europium from the liquid mixture with UV light instead of a solvent The UV light in fluences the electrically charged parti cles known as ions Both europium and yttrium have three positive charges per ion When we shine UV light upon the solution of europium and yttrium we add energy to the system As a result one positive charge per europium ion is neutralised When we add sulphate only the europium reacts with it The result is a precipitate that can easily be filtered while the yttrium remains in the solution says Bart Van den Bo gaert who is preparing a PhD on the subject The advantages of UV light are that it does not leave behind any harmful chemicals in the liquid and that the separation efficiency and pu rity in synthetic mixtures are very high more than 95 of the europium is re covered from the solution The precip itate itself is 98 5 pure so it contains hardly any traces of yttrium A similar purity was obtained with industrial mixtures but the efficiency of the sep aration still needs to be improved That will be one of the next projects tackled by the KU Leuven researchers Press Release May 11 2015 Personals Alcoa announced changes to its Board of Directors Dr Judith Gueron an Alcoa director since 1988 and its Lead Director since 2010 who did not stand for re election when her term expired at the Annual Meeting retired from the Board of Directors Succeeding Gueron as Lead Director is Patricia Russo a member of the Alcoa Board since 2008 Other business at the an nual meeting included election by shareholders of Kathryn Fuller Ra fael Reif Patricia Russo and Ernes to Zedillo to three year terms on the Board With Russo s move to Lead Director she was appointed chair of Alcoa s Governance and Nominating Committee and Michael G Morris retired chairman of American Electric Power Company was appointed chair of Alcoa s Compensation and Bene fits Committee Press Release May 1 2015 UC RUSAL announces the appoint ment of Evgeny Zenkin as Managing Director of the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter BrAZ Andrey Volvenkin who previously held this position has been promoted to a managerial posi tion within the Aluminium Division As Managing Director Evgeny Zen kin s focus will be to increase the val ue added products output and diver sification of the product line product quality improvement further devel opment of RUSAL s business system at BrAZ as well as the implementation of new technologies that will help al leviate environmental impacts Press Release May 1 2015 A change is taking place in the Super visory Board of the Endress Hauser Group Professor Dr Georg Bretthau er has left the board after 13 years Dr Hans Jakob Roth will take up his new post on the Supervisory Board in 2016 Georg Bretthauer has been a member of the Supervisory Board since its constitution in 2002 Georg Bretthauer headed the Applied IT and Automation Engineering faculty at the Karlsruhe Institute for Tech nology Germany The Annual Gen eral Meeting of Endress Hauser AG elected Hans Jakob Roth as successor on 4 May 2015 He can look back on a long career in the Swiss foreign ser vice which took him to Shanghai and Hong Kong as consul general Press Release May 5 2015 Novelis Inc announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Senior Vice President and CFO Steve Fish er to serve as the company s Interim President effective immediately The announcement follows the departure of Philip Martens the company s for mer President and CEO also effec tive immediately The search for a per manent chief executive is under way Press Release April 21 2015 The Supervisory Board of Schaeffler AG has appointed Dr Stefan Spindler as Member of the Board of Managing Directors at Schaeffler AG as of May 1 2015 Before joining the Schaeffler Group Dr Spindler was a Member of the Executive Board at Bosch Rexroth responsible for the Mobile Applications business division He is successor to Robert Schullan CEO of the Industrial division who will leave the Schaeffler Group at his own re quest on May 1 2015 Press Release April 27 2015 Outotec Oyj s Annual General Meet ing hold on March 30 2015 decided that the number of the Board mem bers shall be eight Dr Matti Alahuh ta Eija Ailasmaa Anja Korhonen Timo Ritakallio Björn Rosengren and Poju Zabludowicz were re elected as members of the Board of Directors and Ian W Pearce and Klaus Cawén were elected as new members of the Board for the term expiring at the end of the next Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting elect ed Matti Alahuhta as the Chairman and Timo Ritakallio as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors Press Re lease March 30 2015

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