Published: November 28, 2022 |

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American Rare Earths Limited said its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, Western Rare Earths (WRE), has joined as the industrial partner in a research consortium that includes the technology company, Phinix and Virginia Tech University.

The team was awarded R&D funding by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) in an AMO program known as Critical Materials: Next‐Generation Technologies and Field Validation. The consortium will receive up to $500,000 to fund the work. WRE will provide rare earths bearing ores as feedstock for extraction and separation focused processing technology studies.

“We are honored to join this talented and prestigious consortium as part of our goal to help develop the next-generation of extraction, separation, and processing technologies. We value partnering with organizations at the forefront of developing cleaner, greener processing of rare earths for a more sustainable and secure North American supply chain. We could not be more excited about this latest collaboration,” said Marty Weems, president of Western Rare Earths and also President of North America for American Rare Earths Limited.

“Dr. Das, founder and CEO of Phinix and Professor Zhang, assistant professor, Virginia Tech University, are highly accomplished innovators. We are deeply honored by their invitation to join their team and support them on this important work. We see value in the simplicity of the process which is the key to high volume throughput and successful evolution to industrial scale operations,” added Weems.

PROJECT GOAL

The project goal is to produce light, medium, and heavy rare earth oxide products of greater than 95% purity. Given the criticality of neodymium, a neodymium oxide product of greater than 95 percent purity will also be produced. An innovative extractor technology, based on gas-assisted micro-flow extraction (GAME) theory, will be employed with an efficient task-specific ionic liquid (TSIL) for rare earths extraction and separation. Success could reduce capex and opex expenditures for producing high value rare earths from lower grade sources while improving recovery efficiencies, thus reducing the loss of valuable rare earths to the tailings pile.

“Our proof of concept offers several advantages, such as simple process and high throughput,” said Subodh Das, founder and CEO of Phinix.

“Moreover, due to rapid mass transfer rates and fast extraction of kinetics, our technology is credible for the recovery and separation of REEs from not only conventional rare earth ores, but also from resources with lower concentrations of rare earth content,” added Das.

IMPACT OF DOE FUNDING

“As a result of EERE funding, we expect to raise the technology readiness level from its current classification of stage 2 to stage 3,” said Virginia Tech Professor, Wencai Zhang.

“This project represents a fantastic opportunity to showcase our new state of the art, minerals and materials processing laboratory capabilities that we renovated and expanded over the past year. We now have one of the finest research facilities in the world that is focused on rare earths processing to facilitate the global transition to the reduced carbon, new energy future,” added Zhang.

About American Rare Earths
American Rare Earths (ARR) Limited is an Australian company with assets in the growing rare earth metals sector of the United States of America, emerging as an alternative international supply chain to China’s market dominance of a global rare earth market expected to expand to $20 billion by 2030. The company’s mission is to supply critical materials for renewable energy, green tech, electric vehicles, national security, and a carbon-reduced future.

Western Rare Earths (WRE) is the wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of the company. ARR owns 100 percent of the world-class La Paz rare-earth project, located 170km northwest of Phoenix, Arizona. As a large tonnage, bulk deposit, La Paz is potentially the largest, rare-earth deposit in the USA and benefits from containing exceptionally low penalty elements such as radioactive thorium and uranium. ARR’s other major project is Halleck Creek in Wyoming that recently completed exploration drilling with highly promising assay results. The results demonstrate the potential of Halleck Creek to become one of the major, large scale, rare-earth mines in North America.

To stop by American Rare Earths’ website, CLICK HERE

About PHINIX
Phinix is a small-scale entrepreneurial company founded by Dr. Subodh Das in September 2008, after his diverse and successful academic and industrial careers in the metallurgy sector at the University of Kentucky, ARCO Aluminum, and Alcoa. Phinix has been developing and commercializing extractive metallurgical processes, while Dr. Das has successfully managed numerous metallurgical research multi-disciplinary collaborations consortia involving industry, universities, and U.S. national laboratories. Dr. Subodh Das has been the principal investigator of many DOE (IOF-AMO-EERE and ARPA-E, REMADE) and DoD (DLA) projects since 2000. Phinix is currently focusing on the development and commercialization of processes for extraction of aluminum, magnesium, titanium, and rare earth elements (REEs) from domestic scrap/waste materials.

To stop by PHINIX’s website, CLICK HERE

About Virginia Tech University
The mineral processing and extractive metallurgy group of Dr. Wencai Zhang in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech is a university-based teaching and research group with extensive expertise in process technology and development. The Department was established in 1872 and is currently the only mining and minerals engineering program located within a nationally ranked college of engineering. The group has been focusing on the development of technologies for extracting precious metals and REEs from domestic scrap and waste materials, such as coal-based materials, bauxite residue, and electronic waste. The group was involved in the resource assessment, laboratory extraction study, and process flowsheet design for the recovery of REEs from coal refuse in 2015-2018. Several intellectual properties were generated, such as an innovative and low-cost process for the recovery and purification of REEs from acid coal mine leachate, as well as an efficient technology for improving the recovery of REEs from coal refuse. Based on the achievements, a pilot plant has been constructed in western Kentucky, which is the first domestic facility to enable the continuous production of mixed rare earth oxides of greater than 90 percent purity from coal refuse.

To stop by Virginia Tech’s website, CLICK HERE

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