South Africa has significant reserves of various naturally occurring resources.  While some materials can be easily purified from these resources other separations are notoriously difficult.  For example, Zircon, the most important source for Zr worldwide, always contains a few percent of Hf.  The chemical and physical similarity between Zr and Hf make this separation particularly difficult.  For this and other metal precursors, a membrane based solvent extraction technique is used to find cheaper and environmentally friendlier separation techniques compared to the traditional techniques.

Pertraction units from Liqui-cell are used for the separation of various metal salts.