In VIEW of the importance of Rare Earth Elements (REE), the Government of India will establish a state-of-the-art pilot plant to process 100 kg of Red Mud and extract REE from this aluminium waste. The plant is expected to be operational by December 2024. Top institutions, including Jawaharlal Nehru Aluminium Research Design and Development Centre (JNARDDC), Nagpur; CSIR Institute of Metal and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT), Bhubaneswar; CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR-NML), Jamshedpur; and National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) have teamed-up to process 100 kg of red mud in the plant which will allow them to optimise REE extraction from waste. Red mud is a kind of aluminium waste, which is highly hazardous for nature and human health. City-based JNARDDC is the only institution in the country that invented a technology to extract REE from red mud and also to reuse red mud for other commercial activities.

 

“About 35 to 40 per cent of the processed bauxite ore goes into the waste in the form of red mud. The aluminium industry in India produces 5 million tonnes of red mud annually. 10 kg red mud contains about 0.5-0.8 per cent of REE which can be recovered through scientific process,” Dr Anupam Agnihotri, Director, JNARDDC told ‘The Hitavada’.

Dr Agnihotri said that the upcoming pilot plant would make them capable of processing ten times more red mud than they were currently processing. “We are currently processing 10 kg of red mud in our lab to extract REE. The plant will allow us to process 100 kg of red mud. With this, we can extract more rare earth elements,” he said. “We are reusing just 1% of red mud. The remaining 99% is dumped as waste. Under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ mission, the R&D institutions will work together to extract REE from this waste to reduce our dependence on Chinese imports,” he added. “Scandium is one of the strategic element in the group of rare earth elements, which is utilised in space and defence technologies in large number. India produces 10 million tonnes of red mud per annum in which we can extract about 4,000 tonnes of Scandium per annum,” said Dr Agnihotri.