US Patent Issued to UT-Battelle, Battelle Energy Alliance on June 30 for "Methods for separation and recovery of rare earth elements from aqueous solutions using diglycolamide derivatives" (Tennessee, Idaho Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,668,857, issued on June 30, was assigned to UT-Battelle LLC (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) and Battelle Energy Alliance LLC (Idaho Falls, Idaho).

"Methods for separation and recovery of rare earth elements from aqueous solutions using diglycolamide derivatives" was invented by Santa Jansone-Popova (Knoxville, Tenn.), Kevin L. Lyon (Rigby, Idaho), Ilja Popovs (Knoxville, Tenn.) and Bruce A. Moyer (Oak Ridge, Tenn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for extracting rare earth elements from aqueous solution, comprising: (i) acidifying an aqueous solution containing said rare earth elements with an inorganic acid to result in an acidified aqueous so...