DOE OSTI · 3007679
REBOUND: Reverse Engineering Bidirectional Outflow Under Non-Equilibrium Diffusion
Abstract
Rare-earth elements (REEs) are essential for electronics, renewable energy, and defense technologies. However, the current supply of REEs relies on mining concentrated in a few countries and energy-intensive separations. DOE’s Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program has launched a grand challenge which aims to ensure a sustainable supply of critical REEs by developing innovative and environmentally friendly separation methods. As an alternative to costly and harmful traditional methods, the Non-Equilibrium Transport Driven Separations (NETS) initiative has created a microfluidic Y-channel co-flow method that applies external fields to exploit magneto- and electrohydrodynamic effects for separating dilute REE ions from complex feedstocks. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies have identified a few operating conditions with promising ion selectivity and separation efficiency. However, challenges remain regarding Y-channel versatility across feedstocks and accurate incorporation of physical phenomena into CFD models. In this work, we develop a multi-fidelity modelling approach which integrates experimental results with CFD simulation to build a surrogate model for the dependence of separation efficiency to variation of design parameters. The surrogate model enables a reinforcement learning (RL) method to adaptively launch CFD and experimental runs, improving model fidelity around optimal Y-channel parameters.
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Young, Stephen J. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000305826787), Boamah-Agyemang, Mavis D. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000344574594), Amburg, Ilya D. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)], Bowden, Mark E. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)], Butreddy, Pravalika [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000241577821), Chen, Yunxiang [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000160658339), Garimella, Venkata B. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000166499842), Graham, Trenton R. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)] (ORCID:0000000189078004), Mao, Zirui [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)], Suetterlein, Joshua D. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)], Zeng, Chao [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)]. 2025-10-31. REBOUND: Reverse Engineering Bidirectional Outflow Under Non-Equilibrium Diffusion. https://doi.org/10.2172/3007679
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