General Chat / Discussion, page-7095

The Complexities of Refining rare earths, Late last year, US-based MP said it was commissioning refining equipment near its California mine as part of an intricate calibration process that has so far not succeeded, leaving the company reliant on China for refining and, thus, nearly all of its revenue.

The cause of these problems is what's in the Basket Balance of LREO and HREO, if you want to extract neodymium and praseodymium to build EV magnets, for example, you first have to remove the less-desirable lanthanum and cerium from your MREC

This Process involves a process that relies on an intricate cocktail of acids, bases and other chemicals that are tailored to the mine's geology and each mine around the world has different amounts/percentages of the 17 REO, even though they might have higher ppm, the refining of these REO becomes very complex issue especially if your trying to seperate 15-17 REO with high amounts of Lanthanum and Cerium Oxide, so you need to have the correct amount of HREO in your MREC but very low amounts of La and Ce oxide in your basket to make refining of your MREC a much simpler and cost effective process, with Hard Rock REE mining you have to contend with certain levels of Radioactivty.

Its great to have higher ppm but it also could be a disadvantage when process the MREC into individual REO which contaian higher undesirables. the costs could be much higher.

Rare earth basket for various rare earth producers and explorers












Just goes to show the complexity of removing La &Ce if you have very high amounts in your basket and have to contend with the rest of REO's







Have to cosider that having the correct balance of MREC Basket will be cheaper to process/refine into individual Rare Earth Oxides