Sorption of REEs using spinel-ferrite nanoparticles has received great attention in the last decades, because of combining the advantages of iron and manganese metal oxides. Nano-manganese ferrite (MnFe2O4) was successfully synthesized using the co-precipitation method and modified with the addition of zinc to produce (Mn0.8Zn0.2Fe2O4). The synthesized materials were characterized using FTIR, SEM with EDX-mapping, XRD, chemical stability, and surface area. Several process parameters were studied to optimize the efficiency of Ce(III) separation from La(III), Eu(III), Pb(II), and Fe(III) from highly acidic media. The parameters include contact time, solution pH, and metal ion concentration. The sorption process was well fitted to the pseudo-2nd order model, which confirms the chemical nature of the sorption process where equilibrium was achieved after 30 minutes. The pH study's findings demonstrate that Ce(III) was most effectively separated at a very high, acidic pH of 0.5. Both MnFe2O4 and Mn0.8Zn0.2Fe2O4 have high chemical stability in different media where the weight loss was less than 10 %. The correlation coefficient and residual errors analysis confirm that the non-linear extended sips isotherm model more accurately expresses the behavior of the sorption process than the non-linear Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm models. The modified material Mn0.8 Zn0.2Fe2O4 shows higher sorption capacities for all the studied metal ions than MnFe2O4. The maximum sorption capacities of Ce(III), La(III), Eu(III), Pb(II), and Fe(III) in the mixture were 59.2, 6.5, 6.3, 15.4, and 13.7 mg/g, respectively.
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