Our Chemistry, Your Separation Advantage

Re-Shoring Chemical Production for High‑Selectivity Rare Earth Separation

We build the molecules that make rare earth separation possible — cleanly, selectively, and domestically.

The Challenges of Rare Earth Extraction

1. China controls 78.8% of the worlds rare earth production.
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2. Midstream seperation is difficult. Mining and crude seperate is the easy part.
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3. Traditional seperation techniques require anywhere from 100 - 1000 seperate stages in order to collect high-purity oxides. Purity is bought with one weak separation at a time.

Our Platform: Tailored Extractants Built for Selectivity

GlycoSurf’s extractant platform is built on precision molecular design. By independently tuning both the saccharide head group and the hydrophobic tail, each molecule can be engineered to exhibit highly specific binding behavior and optimized phase performance. This modular architecture allows the creation of broad-spectrum binders that capture entire rare earth suites as well as highly discriminating binders that target individual elements with exceptional selectivity.

The result is a versatile, green chemistry platform capable of delivering separation performance that conventional extractants cannot achieve.

Our Tri-Fold Approach

Solvent Extraction

Engineered glycolipid extractants designed for high selectivity and strong phase performance in SX systems.

Modular molecular tuning enables targeting specific rare earth elements or full-spectrum extraction.

Chain length can be preciscly controlled
(n= 4 -24)

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Two connected molecular structures with blue nodes and lines on a white background.

Ion Floatation

Surfactant‑driven flotation pulls dissolved metals from dilute or complex waste streams.

Efficient recovery from low‑grade feeds, enabling extraction where conventional methods fail.

Recyclable surfactant systems reduce waste and support environmentally responsible processing.

Selective Chelation

Solid‑supported chelators separate rare earths by ionic radius in a compact column format.

Customizable binding chemistry allows precise control over which elements are captured and released.

High‑resolution elution profiles replace hundreds of mixer‑settler stages with a single unit operation.

Build something special with GlycoSurf

60+

Years of collective experience

43,000+

Molecules created

30+

Returning customers

Explore the full range of GlycoSurf extractants and see how tunable chemistry can transform your process.

GlycoSurf’s production workflow is built for practical scalability, moving smoothly from small‑batch synthesis to multi‑kilogram and pilot‑scale manufacturing. Each extractant is refined for efficiency and reproducibility, ensuring that custom molecules can be produced reliably at the volumes required for real‑world separation processes. This scalable foundation supports rapid development, testing, and deployment across all application areas.

View Our Molecules