The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Critical Minerals Alliances 2024 - September 16, 2024
Ucore Rare Metals' RapidSX rare earths separation technology is much faster and more sustainable than the solvent extraction methods used in China.
Developing efficient technologies to separate the tightly interlocked rare earths into individual oxides, like the powders in the photo above, is a complex and critical link to establishing an all-American rare earths supply chain.
MP Materials' metals and magnets plant in Texas is the final link in a vertically integrated rare earths supply chain the company has built in the U.S.
Dysprosium and terbium are scarce and expensive heavy rare earths used to increase the durability of magnets for applications such as EV motors and wind turbines.
Between four and 12 pounds of rare earth magnets go into the average EV drive motor.
This mountain at USA Rare Earth's Round Top project in Texas hosts enormous quantities of rare earths, plus seven other critical minerals.
From tech devices such as smartphones and computer monitors to clean energy products like electric vehicles and wind turbines, household goods like vacuum cleaners and refrigerators, and military hardware such as F-35 fighters and communications equipment, rare earths have a critical role to play in nearly every facet of America's economy and security.
The United States, however, currently relies on China for nearly all its supply of rare earths. This dependence is not due to the lack of domestic sources of this suite of 14 technology elements; in fact, the U.S. has abundant sources, and one mine in California produces roughly 12% of the global supply of these elements, which are not as scarce as their name implies.
The real paucity when it comes to establishing a rare earth supply chain in the U.S. is technologies capable of efficiently and sustainably separating this suite of elements into individual oxides and metals that can be used by high-tech, clean energy and other manufacturers.
China, which began monopolizing rare earths separation and processing during the 1990s, continues to control roughly 85% of this key link of global rare earths supply chains – until recently, only individual plants in Malaysia and Estonia offered commercial alternatives.
The Middle Kingdom's dominance of the global rare earth supply chain master link has former and current Pentagon officials worried.
"China's foresight here is as clear as the United States' myopia," said Joe Buccino, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as the communications director for U.S. Central Command from 2021 to 2023. "Should China, in the leadup to an invasion of Taiwan, block exports of rare earths or processing technology, this would cripple the U.S.'s ability to produce the kinds of ammo required to sustain a long-term high-tech war."
At the end of 2023, China announced such an export ban on the technologies to separate and process this suite of tightly bonded technology metals, according to a report published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington-based policy advisor.
"The United States' delay in developing processing capacity will hinder its ability to build both national, energy and economic security," Gracelin Baskaran, author of the report, wrote.
Understanding the economic and security implications of America's heavy dependence on China for rare earths, the U.S. Department of Defense is investing heavily in establishing the separation and processing technologies needed to develop a complete domestic supply chain for these essential elements.
Between four and 12 pounds of rare earth magnets go into the average EV drive motor.
In a world transitioning to clean energy, the top use for rare earths is to produce the powerful magnets that allow wind turbines to transform a breeze into low-carbon electricity, EVs to convert that electricity into whisper-quiet acceleration, MRI machines to generate powerful magnetic fields that create detailed images of organs and tissues, and a wide range of other high-tech, household, and military devices.
"Rare earth element magnets enable a variety of dual-use technologies, including high-power motors in electric vehicles and flight control actuation systems in military aerospace systems," said Moshe Schwartz, a senior fellow for acquisition policy at the National Defense Industrial Association.
As an extension of its rare earths separation and processing dominance, China produces nearly 90% of the world's neodymium-iron-born (NdFeB) rare earth magnets. This provides the country with an advantage when it comes to manufacturing EVs and the innumerable other devices that these magnets go in.
"China's market dominance across the supply chain has been a topic of concern," Schwartz added.
According to a 2022 investigation by the U.S. Department of Commerce, sintered neodymium-iron-born magnets (NdFeB) are "required for critical infrastructure" and "irreplaceable in key defense applications," yet the U.S. is "essentially 100% dependent on imports" for the rare earth magnets.
To help "protect American manufacturers from China's unfair trade practices," the Biden administration placed a 25% tariff on rare earth magnets and a 100% tariff on EVs imported from China.
"With extensive subsidies and non-market practices leading to substantial risks of overcapacity, China's exports of EVs grew by 70% from 2022 to 2023 – jeopardizing productive investments elsewhere," the White House penned in a May briefing on the tariffs.
The White House's attempt to level the playing field and spur domestic rare earth magnet manufacturing comes amidst a sharp rise in the global demand for rare earth magnets, which is expected to triple by 2035 as automakers increase EV manufacturing, according to critical minerals analyst Adamas Intelligence.
Critical mineral and trade policy experts in Washington are worried that China will cut off supplies of rare earth magnets and other critical materials before the U.S. has established viable alternatives.
The communist nation has already demonstrated its ability and willingness to restrict exports of several critical minerals and technologies.
"The rollout of major export restrictions for graphite, gallium, germanium, rare earth extraction, and separation technologies in less than one year should be a powerful signal to U.S. policymakers that although they are late to the critical minerals game, there is a significant need to both build domestic capabilities and leverage international cooperation to facilitate rapid sourcing and developing of processing capacity," Baskaran wrote.
However, China's rare earths separation technology export ban may not have an enormous impact on the efforts to establish processing and separation plants in North America.
The reason for this is threefold:
• The solvent extraction technology used to separate rare earths in China was developed in the U.S. nearly 70 years ago and is not proprietary, though China has likely perfected aspects of this method over the ensuing decades.
• The traditional vat-based mixer-settler solvent extraction method used in China involves a long and arduous process that is considered too labor-intensive and environmentally challenging to be viable for most North American applications.
• North American companies are already scaling up more modern, efficient, and sustainable rare earth processing technologies.
"Innovative and exciting technological alternatives to the environmentally destructive Chinese methods of processing and refining have been developed in the United States," said Drew Horn, CEO of GreenMet, a Washington-based firm that provides a conduit between private capital, government, and critical mineral innovation in the U.S.
In fact, on the same day that China announced its ban on the export of rare earth processing technologies, Ucore Rare Metals Inc. and Rare Element Resources Ltd. each announced major milestones in the advancement of two separate rare earth processing technologies.
Developing efficient technologies to separate the tightly interlocked rare earths into individual oxides, like the powders in the photo above, is a complex and critical link to establishing an all-American rare earths supply chain.
Ucore has been working on establishing a North American rare earth supply chain that is independent of China for nearly two decades.
This endeavor began with work aimed at establishing a mine at its Bokan Mountain rare earth project in Southeast Alaska. Due to a lack of technologies outside of China to process any rare earths produced at Bokan, the company pivoted toward the development and commercialization of a more efficient and cleaner way to separate rare earths, a key to establishing a supply chain that is independent of China.
Ucore's quest for an economically and environmentally viable rare earth separation technology led to the development of RapidSX, which is basically a 21st-century upgrade to the solvent extraction technology on which China built its dominance of the rare earth sector over the past five 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 SX units that China has traditionally used for rare earths separation.
Commissioning of Ucore's RapidSX demonstration plant in Kingston, Ontario, was completed at the end of 2023.
The company is now moving toward the installation of this innovative rare earths separation platform at the Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex (SMC), which is developing at a former U.S. Air Force base in the heart of The Pelican State.
Once scaled up to full capacity, the Louisiana SMC is expected to produce up to 7,500 metric tons of rare earths from six different feedstocks from U.S. and allied sources.
Ucore Rare Metals COO Mike Schrider says the tariffs imposed by the White House are leveling the playing field as it scales up operations.
"We expect this to be of significant benefit as we increase production from 2,000 tonnes (metric tons) per annum to our planned total nameplate production of 7,500 tonnes per annum over our first few years of production and subsequently expand our footprint across North America," he said.
The RapidSX technology is also being backed by the Pentagon, which provided Ucore with $4 million in funding to determine that its demonstration plant can upgrade heavy and light rare earth feedstock sources to salable individual rare earth products.
The Canadian government provided an additional US$3.1 million to support Ucore's demonstration of this modern rare earth separation platform.
Finalization of the RapidSX demo plant commissioning marked the start of the DOD demonstration program.
"The objectives of this program are to establish a direct techno-economic comparison between conventional solvent extraction and RapidSX for separating heavy and light rare earth elements and to establish RapidSX technology for commercial deployment in North America," said Schrider.
Ucore expects to surpass several milestones along the path to installing its RapidSX rare earth separation technology at the Louisiana SMC over the coming months.
Once it has established its rare earths processing technology in the U.S., the company plans to shift some of its focus back on developing a mine at its heavy rare earths enriched Bokan Mountain project in Alaska.
As Ucore marches ahead with the commercialization of RapidSX, the U.S. Department of Energy has authorized funding for the construction of a processing and separation demonstration plant to be developed by Rare Elements Resources in Wyoming.
The processing plant is a key facet of the company's plans to develop a mine at Bear Lodge, a high-grade project in northeastern Wyoming that hosts 1.2 billion pounds of rare earths.
Bear Lodge is not only large and high-grade, but it also happens to be enriched with neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and other rare earths used to make powerful permanent magnets.
A roughly 900-metric-ton sample of high-grade rare earths material from Bear Lodge has been transported to Upton, Wyoming, to be fed through an innovative rare earths processing and separation technology pioneered by General Atomics, a division of General Dynamics.
To speed up the installation, crews have been building components of the rare earths processing demo plant that can be quickly installed at the Upton facility.
Inflation, however, has driven up the costs and slowed development of this plant. In July, Rare Elements announced that the project team led by partner General Atomics estimated that the costs for completion would be around $53.6 million, about 21% higher than originally estimated.
The company has requested that DOE support the larger budget on the same 50% cost-share basis as previously agreed.
"All activities are moving us toward the goal of plant startup in the next few months," said Rare Elements Resources CEO Ken Mushinski on July 1.
MP Materials' metals and magnets plant in Texas is the final link in a vertically integrated rare earths supply chain the company has built in the U.S.
Already operating the largest rare earths mine outside of China and the second largest in the world, MP Materials is the frontrunner when it comes to developing a complete mine-to-magnets rare earths supply chain in the U.S.
The company's Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert produced 41,557 metric tons of rare earth oxides during 2023, which accounts for approximately 12% of the rare earths mined globally last year.
Until recently, however, concentrates produced at Mountain Pass had been sent to China for separation and processing.
Toward its goal of establishing a vertically integrated mine-to-magnets supply chain in the U.S., MP is ramping up commercial rare earths separation capacity at its Mountain Pass Mine in California. This work is being backed by DOD, which has invested $45 million to support the development of heavy and light rare earth separation technologies at Mountain Pass.
"In 2023, we commissioned and began producing separated rare earth products at the collocated refinery at Mountain Pass," MP Materials Senior Vice President of Communications and Policy told Data Mine North in an email.
Over the first half of 2024, this facility produced 403 metric tons of neodymium-praseodymium oxide for magnets, along with 582 metric tons of other rare earth products, including mixed heavy rare earth oxide.
Neodymium-praseodymium oxide and other rare earth products are being shipped to MP Materials' 200,000-square-foot rare earth metals and magnets plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Dysprosium and terbium are scarce and expensive heavy rare earths used to increase the durability of magnets for applications such as EV motors and wind turbines.
The 2022 groundbreaking ceremony for this rare earth metal, alloy, and magnet facility was attended by Texas lawmakers and executives from General Motors, which is a foundational customer of the rare earth magnets produced at the Texas facility.
"The new MP Materials magnetics facility in Fort Worth, Texas, will play a key role in GM's journey to build a secure, scalable, and sustainable EV supply chain," GM Ventures Managing Director Anirvan Coomer said during the groundbreaking.
In April, DOE awarded MP Materials a $58.5 million tax credit under the federal Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) program to be applied toward the completion of the Texas magnet and metals plant.
The first magnets rolling out of the Texas plant, expected next year, will mark the completion of a complete mine-to-magnets rare earths supply chain in the U.S.
MP Materials' agreement with GM extends this supply chain to America's automotive sector and consumers.
USA Rare Earth LLC is also working toward establishing a complete mine-to-magnets rare earths supply chain on American soil. This company, however, is starting at the magnet end and working its way back to the mine.
In 2022, USA Rare Earth purchased a 309,0000-square-foot building in Stillwater, a city in Oklahoma that boasts a growing high-tech economy, to house a rare earths processing and magnets plant.
Even before the building was secured, USA Rare Earth had acquired the neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnet manufacturing equipment that would be installed there. The company was able to buy this equipment in the U.S. from Hitachi Metals America, which briefly used the equipment in North Carolina when China cut off exports of rare earths to Japan a little over a decade ago.
The Oklahoma factory is one link in a complete rare earths mine-to-magnets supply chain that USA Rare Earth is endeavoring to establish in the U.S.
The first link of this chain is the Round Top rare earths and critical minerals mine project in Texas.
Being advanced toward production under a joint venture between USA Rare Earth (80%) and Texas Mineral Resources Corp. (20%), the Round Top project southeast of El Paso hosts an enormous deposit of minerals critical to the U.S.
This mountain at USA Rare Earth's Round Top project in Texas hosts enormous quantities of rare earths, plus seven other critical minerals.
A preliminary economic assessment for Round Top outlines plans for a mine that would produce 2,212 metric tons of rare earths per year, plus seven other minerals critical to the U.S. – beryllium, gallium, hafnium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, and zirconium.
The suite of rare earth elements produced at Round Top will include six REEs used in magnets – neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium, and samarium.
The future Texas mine is also expected to produce roughly 10,000 metric tons of lithium each year, which further increases Round Top's potential as a domestic supplier of the metals needed for a nation transitioning to EVs charged with low-carbon electricity.
While Round Top is being permitted, funded, and developed, USA Rare Earth is securing other sustainable sources of rare earths for its Oklahoma factory.
With its sights set on producing magnets by the end of the year, USA Rare Earth entered into an agreement to purchase rare earths mined at Australian Strategic Materials' (ASM) Dubbo project in Australia and processed in South Korea.
"ASM provides us with predictable access to a non-Chinese supply of rare earth metals, which allows us to ramp-up our initial production and accelerate our goal of generating revenue, while we continue to construct our own mine," said USA Rare Earth CEO Tom Schneberger.
In March, the company entered into a deal to buy ultra-pure rare earths produced at ReElement Technologies Corp.'s state-of-the-art refining facility in Indiana.
Utilizing a patented technology developed in partnership with Purdue University, ReElement recovers rare earths and other critical minerals from recycled permanent magnets and lithium-ion batteries, as well as processing ore and coal waste streams, to create a low-cost, sustainable, and circular source of rare earths and battery materials.
"As the leading domestic producer of ultra-high purity rare earth oxides, we couldn't be more excited to further our relationship with USA Rare Earth and their amazing team for the fully domestic production of permanent magnets from rare earth elements," said ReElement Technologies CEO Mark Jensen.
Under the agreement, USA Rare Earth will begin purchasing rare earth oxides from ReElement's Kansas processing and recycling plant in 2025.
"In conjunction with our other supply agreements, ReElement will enable us to ramp up production quicker and in a more environmentally friendly manner while we continue to build out our own mine in Texas," said Schneberger.
A mine that would anchor a second mine-to-magnets rare earths supply chain in the U.S.
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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