Chinese plant extracts critical rare metals from lithium waste in ‘world first’

China has launched a 500-tonne production line to extract rubidium and caesium from lithium waste. A demonstration line in Jiangxi province – the world’s first with an annual capacity of 500 tonnes for continuous tower extraction and separation of low-grade rubidium and caesium – has achieved stable production, according to the Institute of Process Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Rubidium and caesium are critical to aerospace, quantum computing, biomedicine, new energy...