The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News – January 10, 2024
Mixed rare earths concentrate produced during pilot testing of material from Defense Metals' Wicheeda project in BC.
Rows of RapidSX columns at Ucore's rare earths separation demonstration and commercialization plant in Ontario.
In a milestone along the path to establishing a complete rare earth elements supply chain in North America, Defense Metals Corp. will ship a mixed rare earth carbonate sample from its Wicheeda project in British Columbia to Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s RapidSX REE commercialization and demonstration facility in Ontario for processing.
"We expect to ship a mixed rare earth carbonate sample in the next few weeks to Ucore's demonstration plant for testing," said Defense Metals CEO Craig Taylor.
The processing of Wicheeda materials through Ucore's rare earths separation demo plant is part of a larger collaborative effort under a memorandum of understanding between the two companies moving toward the commercialization of projects that represent two links of the rare earths supply chain.
"The MOU lays out the framework wherein Defense Metals' technically strong and readily accessible North American REE resource can be further processed and refined using Ucore's Canadian-founded technology, RapidSX," said Ucore Chairman and CEO Pat Ryan.
Located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Prince George in eastern BC, Wicheeda is a road-accessible property that hosts a surfacing rare earths deposit with fairly high-grade mineralization – attributes that increase the economic viability of a future mine at the project.
According to the most recent calculation, Wicheeda hosts 34.2 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 2.02% (699,000 metric tons) of total rare earth oxides; plus 11.1 million metric tons averaging 1.02% (113,000 metric tons) TREO.
Defense Metals completed and optimized a hydrometallurgical pilot plant for producing mixed rare earth concentrates from Wicheeda material during 2023 as part of the company's preparation for a prefeasibility study that details the economic and engineering parameters for developing a mine at the BC project, which is slated for completion before the end of March.
This will mark a significant step toward completion of a feasibility study, permitting, and development of the rare earths mine project.
SGS Canada Inc., which has been carrying out the Wicheeda hydrometallurgical pilot work at its lab in Ontario, will ship a 26-metric-ton sample of the concentrates produced at the pilot plant to Ucore for processing through the RapidSX REE separation plant.
"The Wicheeda project is being developed as a viable source of REE from North America, and as more processing and separation facilities come online in the future, the demand for REE feedstock will be increasingly important," said Taylor. "This MOU with Ucore is a further step in that direction to be part of the Western world's REE supply chain."
For Ucore, the MOU with Defense Metals marks another tangible step on its path to a commercial rare earths separation enterprise in North America.
The RapidSX technology being commercialized by Ucore offers a faster and more environmentally sound technological upgrade to the solvent extraction method that has been the standard for separating rare earths for more than four decades.
Independent testing has shown that the innovative column-based RapidSX platform can separate rare earths nearly 10 times faster within a footprint that is about one-third the size required for the mixer-settler units used for traditional SX separation.
This technology, which is custom-built to meet the rare earth needs and environmental standards in the West, has attracted the attention of the federal governments in both the United States and Canada.
In June of last year, the U.S. Department of Defense invested US$4 million (C$5.5 million) to evaluate the RapidSX demo plant's capacity to produce saleable heavy rare earth products. This was followed by a C$4.3 million (US$3.1 million) investment by the Canadian government in November to produce three light rare earth products used in the permanent magnets that go into electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators – neodymium, praseodymium, and a neodymium-praseodymium compound.
With the Canadian funding, Ucore plans to process 13 to 15 metric tons of rare earths feedstock from Canadian and U.S. sources over a six-month span.
The processing of materials through the demo plant in Ontario is not only verifying RapidSX's technical viability but demonstrating the technology is a good fit for future suppliers of North American feedstock for Ucore's commercial REE separation operations, the first of which is being developed in Louisiana.
Earlier this month, Ucore finalized the acquisition of an 80,800-square-foot building at an industrial park in Louisiana that will house the first commercial installation of RapidSX.
The processing of the Defense Metals bulk sample through the RapidSX Commercialization and Demonstration Facility is an early step in establishing Wicheeda as a potential future source of mixed rare earths feedstock for Ucore's Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex.
"Receiving the sample mixed rare earth carbonate at our Kingston CDF will start the process of determining what may be possible between the companies as we collectively look to fuel the 21st-century energy transition," said Ryan.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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