Under Atmanirbhar Bharat Mission, city-based institute Jawaharlal Nehru Aluminium Research Development Design Centre (JNARDDC) has innovated a distinct technology to extract Rare Earth Elements (REE) from aluminium waste (Red Mud), in an attempt to reduce India's import dependence on China for REE. According to the report, the institute has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with CSIR-Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT), Bhubaneswar; CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR-NML), Jamshedpur; National Aluminium Company Ltd. (NALCO), Hindalco Industries Ltd., and Vedanta Ltd., under the initiative of Indian Government’s NITI Aayog, for joint research and development to further enhance its innovation.
Red Mud is produced during alumina extraction from bauxite through Bayer’s process, the principal industrial means of processing bauxite to produce alumina.
Statistically, 1-1.5 tonnes of red mud is produced during the production of 1 tonne of alumina, depending upon the mineralogical composition of the bauxite and extraction efficiencies. Dr Upendra Singh, Principal Scientist of JNARDDC pointed out, “India is the fourth-largest producer of aluminium in the world with a share of around 5.3 per cent of the global aluminium output, hence, the development of red mud’s effective handling, storage, usage and management is necessary for the welfare of the global community.”
He also said that NITI Aayog identified red mud as one of the rich secondary sources of REEs and recommended adopting a holistic approach for the utilisation of red mud. This has led the Government of India to make an attempt to reduce the reliability over China for REE by extracting REEs from locally available resources.
“Scandium is one of the strategic elements in the group of REEs which is utilised in space and defence technologies at 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 Anupam Agnihotri, Director at JNARDDC.
Dr Agnihotri boasts about the fact that JNARDDC is the only institution in India that has invented a technology to extract REE from red mud and to reuse red mud for other commercial activities. He points out that currently, India reuses only 1 per cent of red mud, while the remaining 99 per cent is dumped as waste.
The joint effort of JNARDDC and other R&D institutions is also expected to lead to the extraction of iron, alumina, and titanium present in red mud.
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