Mining News: News Nuggets: SuperLig stage one a success, pilot plant creates pure REEs

Ucore Rare Metals Inc. May 9 reported that the SuperLig-One rare earth element separation pilot plant has successfully created 99 percent pure rare earths from a pregnant leach solution derived from the company’s Bokan-Dotson Ridge project in Southeast Alaska. SuperLig-One, designed and constructed by Utah-based IBC Advanced Technologies Inc., utilizes a highly-selective process known as molecular recognition technology to isolate rare earth elements suspended in a solution. During the initial stage of testing the pilot plant, the suite of rare earths contained in the pregnant leach solution was separated from non-REE constituents such as iron, thorium, uranium, zinc, copper, nickel, titanium, zirconium, and other trace base metals. Ucore says this early removal of impurity metals distinguishes SuperLig-One from less selective legacy technologies such as solvent extraction and ion exchange, which require multiple separation stages downstream in order to achieve the same purity levels obtained by SuperLig. In the process of removing impurities, the pilot plant retained more than 99 percent of the rare earths in the solution, leaving essentially all of the rare earths originally present in the solution available for the next steps of separation. The next stages of operation consist of running the pure REE solution sequentially through each unit operation in the plant to separate out scandium, a highly valued REE used in advanced aluminum alloys for the aerospace sector, then light and heavy rare earths and finally, heavy rare earths into individual critical REEs. Upon completion of these four stages, the pilot plant is expected to produce terbium and europium that exceeds 99 percent purity and dysprosium at 99.99 percent purity. The remaining solutions containing heavy and light REEs will be retained for future separations. After confirmatory testing of each stage of operation, the plant will undergo a continuous run of rare earth-bearing solution.

- Shane Lasley