Description
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Neodymium is a lanthanide that has a silvery-yellow bright color in its natural solid state. It is a rare earth element, and it oxidizes easily when exposed to air. Neodymium has an atomic weight of 144.242, a melting point of 1875 °F, and a boiling point of 5565 °F. Some common uses of neodymium include: in the form of neodymium magnets which are some of the strongest permanent magnets in the world, to color glass in red and grey colors, as a colorant for enamels, and in incandescent lamps.
Isolation
Neodymium never occurs in its free form in nature, and extraction processes are needed to isolate neodymium from the compounds it occurs in.
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Neodymium is found most often in nature in Misch metal, monazite sand, and the mineral bastnasite. Due to the fact that these minerals and compounds also contain lanthanides and other rare earth elements, it is difficult to isolate neodymium. The process of neodymium isolation and extraction is highly complex; due to the complexity of the process, neodymium is never isolated on a small scale laboratory basis.
The first isolation process of neodymium involves extracting the lanthanides and metals out of the ores in their salt form. This step is carried out using sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide. To further isolation the neodymium from other lanthanides and metals, procedures such as solvent extractions and ion exchange chromatography are used. Once neodymium has been reduced to its fluoride form using these processes, it can be reacted with pure calcium metal in a heated chamber to form pure neodymium and calcium fluoride. Some calcium contaminants remain in the neodymium, and vacuum processes are used to remove any of these contaminants.