Using its continuous ion chromatography (CIC) methodology, K-Technologies has removed much of the rare earths lanthanum and cerium from a leach solution.
The move marks the completion of the first phase of the second stage of process development. Texas Rare Earth said the resultant aqueous product stream can be processed to make a commercially marketable mid/heavy (MH) rare earth mixed concentrate.
Following this phase of K-tech’s procedure, lanthanum and cerium make up less than 8% of total rare earths present in the stream.
More valuable REEs like praseodymium, neodymium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium and yttrium make up about 68% of the product stream.
Texas Rare Earth Resources CEO Dan Gorski said: "Removing the low value lanthanum and cerium at an early stage with minimal separation effort bodes well for the overall efficiency and economy of this process and also provides us the option of making a marketable, praseodymium/neodymium plus mid/heavy rare earth concentrate.
"We intend to examine the economic possibilities of producing and marketing such a concentrate. However, our primary objective over the short term is to use the CIC process to further refine the MH concentrate and to produce individual high purity REE products that meet all commercial specifications."
Texas Rare Earth Resources board member Jack Lifton said: "There is a good market today for clean ‘mixed’ concentrates of the critical rare earths (free of radioactivity and of separation chemistry interfering base metals).
"In particular the market discounts for clean mixtures of the critical heavy rare earths are small enough to warrant marketing them as soon as they are available.
"Current global producers are offering mixed concentrates of critical rare earths. In the case of TRER we would offer praseodymium, neodymium, terbium, dysprosium, and yttrium."
