Feb 22, 2021 – The Department of Energy awarded a contract to Skyhaven Systems to develop and demonstrate a low temperature, low energy process to separate and recover rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are valued for their unique magnetic, optical, and catalyst properties. These materials are used in many clean energy technologies including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic thin films, and fluorescent lighting. While the mining of the mineral deposits is fairly straightforward, the separation and purification of the individual lanthanide elements are laborious and energy-intensive. New separation and recovery technologies are needed to enable more rapid, flexible, efficient, environmentally friendly extraction and separations of individual lanthanides from mixtures with the goal of increasing the domestic supply of rare earth elements and decreasing the costs of processing high purity metals.