Sustainable Development of Rare Earth Elements and Resources, Applications, and Industry

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to the Special Issue entitled, ‘Sustainable Development of Rare Earth Elements and Resources, Applications, and Industry’. The significance of rare earth elements (REEs) has been recognized in terms of their uses, their trade, the number of recent global initiatives, and the number of related geopolitical events/reports. Rare earth elements (REEs) include the lanthanide series elements (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, and Lu), as well as Sc and Y, and they have attracted considerable interest in recent years for a variety of reasons, particularly due to concerns over the security of supply for modern high-efficiency electronics and energy technologies. Generally, rare earth resources constitute both lighter and heavier types of metals and they have attracted considerable attention in the past century due to their large number of applications. The increasing global demand for these elements is currently generating a lot of interest among exploration geochemists as well as technology developers, especially because of their very important role in green applications such as hybrid cars, electric car batteries, and wind turbines under the backdrop of climate change and global warming.  In this Special Issue, we invite submissions exploring cutting-edge research and recent advances in the fields of the global scenario of REE, starting from their applications in high technology products, occurrence, different types of economic deposits both on land and oceans, their behavior in different geological systems, state-of-the-art chemical characterization techniques, and recycling. However, the recycling of REE is not easy and challenges appear at every level. Furthermore, this Special Issue mainly focuses on industrial applications and recycling subjects with regards to waste minimization, environmental/economic incentives, energy considerations, industrial ecology, and wastewater treatment applications. Both theoretical and experimental studies are welcome, as well as comprehensive review and survey papers.

Dr. Nikolaos Koukouzas
Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Papoulis
Dr. Petros Petrounias
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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