Resource World Magazine

A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 www.resourceworld.com 49 Pass in California. Michael Silver, CEO of American Elements, has made a case to the Whitehouse to nationalize Mountain Pass. SURPRISING GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY Researchers at Penn State University have recently discovered that there are significant rare earths present in the coal deposits and their overburden clays in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The US government has noted this and on June 17 Fox News reported that the government is investing $7 million into researching ways to mine and produce REEs from coal and related clays. In her presentation at the summit, Mary Anne Alvin, Technology Manager for Rare Earth Elements at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, explained how the Department of Energy (DOE)-NETL has launched a "Feasibility of Recovering REEs" program. The program includes 15 active projects that aim to validate the technology for recovering saleable REE products from coal and related clays. This geological discovery has not gone unnoticed in Canada. At the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, first year PhD student Vinoth Kuppusamy, under the supervision of Dr. Maria Holuszko, is writ- ing his thesis on the rare earths potential of BC coal deposits. REE MANUFACTURERS HEFA Rare Earth Canada Co. Ltd. of Richmond, British Columbia manufactures a variety of rare earth products that include rare earth oxides and metals up to a purity of 99.9999%. Other products utilize gal- lium, tantalum, phosphors, zirconium and rare earths mischmetals (mixed metals). Alliance LLC of Valparaiso, Indiana, manufactures a variety of magnets – some utilizing REEs, including neodymium and samarium, and some using other elements such as AlNiCo. To give you an idea what kind of demand there is for neodymium magnets, Alliance`s Robert Wolf pointed out at the San Diego conference that wind turbines use 594 lbs of neodymium mag- nets. If ordinary ferrite magnets were used, turbines would weigh 4,752 lbs – making them too heavy for wind turbines. Speaking of energy, as an aside, Dr. David Trueman noted, "If Japan switched to neodymium magnets in the country's air conditioning pumps, they would cut their energy usage in half. I expect this to pro- ceed slowly over the coming years." RECYCLING REES Recycling REEs is an obvious idea con- sidering how many products – such as computer hard drives – contain valuable rare earths. There are price challenges but some companies are giving it a go. In his presentation at the conference, Casey McNeil, CEO of REEcycle, noted that some 100 million computer hard drives are recycled each year in the US which repre- sents 500,000 – 600,000 kilograms of REEs. His four-year old company is developing a technology to economically recycle com- puter hard drives whose magnets contain 33% REEs (NdFeB). McNeil said the four pillars of REE recycling are: 1) magnet acquisition 2) by-product elimination 3) separation & purification 4) reuse in manufacturing. However, recycling won't be a busi- ness unless it is economically viable. In this case, it means that recycled REEs can't cost more than 'virgin' REEs from China or nobody would buy them. Dr. Robert Fox of the Idaho National Laboratory suggested in his presentation that "We need a bulk-scale processing system that includes collecting old REE- bearing products." He explained that there are different levels of recycling – from easy re-assignment to complete destruction and re-birth. At the conference, Cameron Davies of Rare Earth Salts, said, "If you can't be profitable using Chinese domestic pric- ing, you won't survive." He remarked that there are now at least six new REE sepa- ration technologies being developed that claim to be environmentally friendly. OTHER RARE EARTHS OPPORTUNITIES AND BENEFITS Dr. Trueman explained that university- level research on rare earths can lead to greater understanding of how the Earth was formed and that can lead to new exploration ideas. He added that while China dominates the light REEs (LREEs) that is not quite the case for heavy REEs (HREEs) which opens up interesting explo- ration opportunities targeting the heavies. Currently, LREEs account for 85% of pro- duction and HREEs account for 15%. Photo-illustration courtesy Alliance LLC.

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