Rare Earth Element Content and Distribution in Ash-Slag Mixes Deposited in the Gardawice Landfill

Abstract

Raw materials policy plays an increasingly important role in the economies of countries all over the world. The development of new technologies grows the demand for resources. The list of critical resources accepted by the European Committee contains rare earth elements, commonly referred to as REEs. A prospective way of obtaining these elements is recovering them from power industry wastes originating from coal combustion. This publication presents the results of research aimed at evaluating the content as well as illustrating and interpreting the spatial distribution of rare earth elements in power industry wastes deposited in a chosen landfill. It also presents maps of horizontal variability in the content of REEs deposited in certain layers of the ash-slag mix.