Pentagon-backed testing to demonstrate company's rare earths separation tech outperforms its antiquated predecessor.

With the backing of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Canadian government, Ucore Rare Metals Inc. is making headway toward establishing a North American plant that will deliver a secure supply of the rare earth elements essential to a wide array of household goods, high-tech devices, military hardware, and clean energy technologies.

Developing a technology capable of efficiently and cleanly separating the tightly interlocked rare earths into individual elements that can be used by industry is key to establishing a rare earths supply chain independent of China.

Ucore has developed a separation technology called RapidSX that modernizes the solvent extraction (SX) methods used to separate rare earths in China for decades.

While effective, traditional SX is a time- and labor-intensive process that involves dozens of steps using large vats of chemicals. Ucore's RapidSX technology utilizes the same principles as traditional SX but is much faster, less labor-intensive, and more environmentally sound.

Independent testing has shown that the innovative column-based RapidSX platform can separate rare earths nearly 10 times faster within one-third the footprint of mixer-settler SX units used in China.

So far, Ucore has scaled this technology from a concept tested in a lab to a semi-commercial, 52-stage demonstration plant being operated in Ontario. Now, the company is putting the rare earths separation tech through its paces to ensure that the RapidSX circuits can be copied and pasted into its Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex (SMC), a commercial-scale plant being developed in the U.S.

This potential domestic source of rare earth elements has attracted the attention of DOD, which invested $4 million to confirm that the RapidSX demo plant is capable of upgrading heavy and light rare earth feedstock sources to salable individual rare earth products.

"The DOD work that Ucore is performing in Kingston is essential to the commercial deployment of our RapidSX™ separation technology in Louisiana," said Ucore Rare Metals COO Mike Schrider.

The Pentagon-funded testing includes a side-by-side comparison with a small mixer-settler SX circuit at the Ontario facility.

In an Oct. 24 update, Ucore says it has completed 60% of the objectives of the project and that the RapidSX has proven to be equal or superior to traditional SX when it comes to how much of the rare earths are recovered and the purity of the elements produced.

Ucore Rare Metals Inc.

Ucore secured this building at England Airpark, a former U.S. Air Force base in the heart of Louisiana, for its Louisiana SMC.

Ucore says the DOD-funded program will continue into the first half of 2025, and then the testing will transition to a $3 million (C$4.3 million) light rare earths demonstration project funded by the Canadian government. This phase of testing will focus on the separation of neodymium, praseodymium, and a neodymium-praseodymium compound, which are the main rare earths used in the powerful magnets used in electric vehicle motors, wind turbine generators, and a wide array of other household, high-tech, and military applications.

The overall goal of the DOD- and Canada-funded programs is to demonstrate the viability of RapidSX, derisk this brand-new technology, and ensure it is ready to copy and paste into the Louisiana SMC.

"The operation of our demonstration-scale plant de-risks the commercial scale-up and allows Ucore the opportunity to attract like-minded Western partners as the company works to assist in establishing an alternative rare earth supply chain – particularly for heavy rare elements which are essential to the operation of rare earth permanent magnets at elevated temperatures in military, commercial and consumer vehicles and robots," said Schrider.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News

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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