Geomega consolidates ISR tech operations

Foreseeing a green technologies hub emerging in the southeastern regions of Canada, Geomega Resources Inc. is centralizing all its operations into a single larger location within the town of Saint-Hubert, Quebec.

This Quebec locale harkens back to Geomega's roots, as the critical metals recycling and extraction company originally began developing its innovative technologies while seeking a means to recover rare earths from its Montveil deposit in Quebec. The company, however, soon realized that its technology could be applied to recovering REEs from recycled magnets, as well as drawing value from and reducing the environmental footprint of bauxite (aluminum ore) residues piling up at aluminum refineries.

Earning funding, grants, and partnerships from government and private parties alike, Geomega has quickly made headway with its Innord's Separation of Rare Earths (ISR) technology, a proprietary, low-cost, and environmentally friendly way to recover rare earths and other critical minerals from recycled magnets and mine tailings.

Due to its quickly expanding technologies and the various supplementary services and manpower needed to streamline them, Geomega has opted to combine all its operations into one locale.

In addition to its consolidation, the company's private research and development subsidiary Innord Inc. has been awarded yet another grant, this time from the Program to Support Research and Development for the Extraction, Transformation, and Recycling of Critical and Strategic Metals, for a total of C$493,000.

The company aims to use this funding toward the development of a new process for recycling hydrochloric acid (HCI) from metal chlorides, which can also be used for rare earths and scandium recovery.

Finally, Geomega has provided an update for its future magnet recycling demonstration plant that the company says is still on track to begin construction at the new site later this year.

Centralized operations

With the last two years practically overwhelming Innord with new R&D projects – to expand its technologies into other major applications, Geomega felt it prudent to look for a larger location to optimize its operating pipeline.

As the current facilities in Boucherville, Quebec, no longer made it possible to meet the growing needs for either laboratory space or offices to support hiring, along with the construction of the magnet recycling demonstration plant expected to begin later this year, the company has taken the opportunity to relocate all its activities under one roof instead of expanding into a third facility.

At 18,000 square feet, this standalone facility located in the Gérard-Leclerc industrial zone of Saint-Hubert, Longueuil, is about eight kilometers (five miles) from its previous location, with all the same location advantages – such as less than 30 minutes from Montreal and within six hours from many major North American cities such as Boston, New York, and Toronto, as well as access to several major highways and expressways.

Two airports are also located within 40 minutes of the new location, the Trudeau International Airport in Montreal and the Montreal-Saint-Hubert-Longueil airport.

Most importantly, the new site will gain access to major seaways with the Port of Montreal, about 20 minutes away, which is the largest container transshipment center in the Great Lakes system – Saint Lawrence Seaway – and a direct link to Europe and the East Coast of the United States, as well as the marine terminal in Contrecoeur, only 30 minutes away.

The availability of outdoor space at the Saint-Hubert facility is also a key benefit from the previous location as it allows more flexibility of utilities that would be necessary to operate the magnet recycling plant.

"With no space for expansion and a potential risk of operating three facilities requiring their own analytical laboratories, prep labs and other services and utilities, the timing was right to consolidate all our activities before the construction of the demonstration plant starts," said Geomega President and CEO Kiril Mugerman. "Having all our activities centralized with space to expand our R&D facility will be able to accommodate our growing pipeline of projects that are already in the application for funding phase. We are thrilled with this new location as it will allow us to streamline Geomega's operations in the future and simplify the construction of the demonstration plant."

Hydrochloric acid recycling

With the move on the way, the latest research project into hydrochloric acid recycling is on track to be completed within the next two years, which the company expects will have important synergies with its other projects.

HCI is a strong leaching reagent that can be used to extract REE, scandium, and other metals from various sources, such as permanent magnets, rare earths ore, and bauxite residues. Although it has many advantages, its cost compared to sulfuric acid can be prohibitive due to its high consumption by gangue (useless) minerals and other major elements like iron and aluminum.

This often results in important volumes of spent water and solid residues and solutions with only limited efficiency in recycling HCI.

Thus, the solution being developed by Innord is an alternative method that allows regenerating HCI from an aqueous solution of metal chlorides without the need for high-temperature treatments.

This project will include testing the bench scale HCI recycling process on REE- and scandium-rich leaching solutions and provide a techno-economical evaluation of the process.

"The team is very excited to start working on this innovative solution. Geomega has worked with HCI as far back as 2013 while developing the Montviel flowsheet but the limitations of HCI recycling has always been a major challenge," added Mugerman. "The development of this process can open the door to new extraction methods of REE and scandium from various sources across Quebec by lowering the cost of leaching and limiting the chloride effluent or residues in processes that use HCI today. These results could ultimately be applied to other critical and strategic metals such as cobalt, nickel, niobium, lithium, and others."

The CEO also states that it could potentially replace the use of sulfuric acid, which would ultimately make certain leaching practices more environmentally sustainable and more cost competitive.

"In other words, the commercial applications to this solution are very wide and favorable for Geomega," said Mugerman.

Future magnet plant

The company says the search for a new location for its planned magnet recycling demonstration plant over the last few months has had an important impact on its engineering.

While a hazard and operability analysis was successfully completed to 90%, and modifications are now being made to process the design, other building activities with the commissioned engineering firm were postponed in order to avoid incurring charges twice.

The firm is also resuming its activities beginning May 1 for the peripheral engineering design of the new Saint-Hubert facility, as the layout must be adjusted for the new location.

Geomega also states its in-house engineering team will continue to discuss with various vendors in preparation for ordering necessary equipment.

Aside from those logistics, environmental permitting activities have continued as well as they will not be impacted by the location change. However, municipal permitting has begun, as well as ground-site preparation work.

Finally, equipment that was ordered in 2022 will be moved to the new location, while equipment still on the way has been postponed due to the change of location, which the company says will restart all plans.

You can read about Geomega's early introduction to ISR, which should give more information on its process, at Magnets are rare earth feed for Geomega in the August 12, 2020 edition of Metal Tech News.