Recently

there has been considerable interest in the use of microchannel reactors for hydrometallurgy of rare earths (REs). Here

a novel integrated microchannel reactor based on the hollow-strut SiC foam material is presented and demonstrated to extract Ce

3+

and Pr

3+

using 2-ethylhexyl phosphoric acid mono-2-ethylhexyl ester (P507) as the extractant. The typical three-dimensional reticulated structure of the hollow-strut SiC foam was characterized by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray micro computed tomography. Since the reactor’s structure plays a key role in fluid mixing and mass diffusion during the extraction process

the structure-performance relationship of the foam was studied by extraction experiments combined with numerical simulations. Using the foam with the optimal structure

the influence of the flow rate

Q

0

of the two liquid phases on the extraction efficiency

η

and overall volume mass transfer coefficient

K

L

a

was discussed. For both RE ions

with increasing

Q

0

η

decreases while

K

L

a

increases. For the total flow rate of the two phases of 4 ml·min

-1

the

η

values of Pr

3+

and Ce

3+

reached 98.7% and 97.0%

respectively. For the total flow rate of 36 ml·min

-1

which was much higher than that of many other microchannel reactors reported in the literatures

the

η

values of Pr

3+

and C

e

3+

still reached 92.2% and 86.9%

respectively

and the

K

L

a

values of Pr

3+

and Ce

3+

were 0.198 and 0.161 s

-1

respectively

similar to the high values reported for other microchannel reactors studied in previous work. These findings indicate that the hollow-strut SiC foam microchannel reactor is suitable for use in REs extraction.