Some interesting comments by Jack on the LAMP & La Rochelle.Note...

Some interesting comments by Jack on the LAMP & La Rochelle.
Note to one of the older China conspiracy threads: "the LAMP was using the latest Rhodia (China) developed separation technology."
Solvay/Rhodia actually started the La Rochelle recycling last week. http://proedgewire.com/rare-earth-press/solvay-launches-its-rare-earth-recycling-activity-in-france/

http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2012/09/where-are-the-non-chinese-heavy-rare-earths-going-to-come-from-and-whos-going-to-buy-them/#comment-3229

jesse September 30, 2012 at 7:53 am
Jack, if you’re such a heavy rare earth expert, how come you have no mention of France’s La Rochelle rare earth processing plant? It’s multiple football fields in length and fully operational. They have a capacity of hundreds of tons.

Have you been there? Have you spoke to the officers of that company to get their opinions on what is happening in this market? Wouldn’t it make sense to interview them?

21 Jack Lifton September 30, 2012 at 10:42 am
Jesse,

Rhodia has been asked twice this year to allow me to visit La Rochelle. Once on a team with a HREE junior (a consulting client) seeking a separation processing supplier and once as part of a group discussing a j/v with Rhodia for REE processing. Both times, although the visits were approved, I was specifically refused an invitation. I don’t know why. One of these occurrences was after 3 Rhodia technical people had attended an invited lecture I gave at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium on the state-of-the-art in REE separation technology. The “secrets” to the efficient operation of an SX plant, such as the old one at LaRochelle, are the feedstock PLS concentrations, the specific extractants, extractant concentrations, carrier solvents, the contact time, vortex speed, temperature. etc. None of those can be determined by me simply by looking at tanks or mixers. I thought it was petty of Rhodia to exclude me.

I visited and toured and spoke for hours with the staff and management of the LAMP facility in Malaysia shortly after I spoke in Belgium. It was my understanding that the LAMP was using the latest Rhodia (China) developed separation technology. It is an impressive facility that is at least 100 acres in size, and my specialist colleagues on the visit including Prof Chun Hua Yan of Peking University declared it to be state-of-the-art. It was stated to us by the LAMP management and by Lynas VP Technology that the LAMP is NOT intended to or designed to process and separate HREEs.

I have been told that Rhodia has reactivated LaRochelle in order to process scrap material recovered from CFLs and LEDs by Umicore to recover the rare earth, or rare earth related, phosphor materials in them such as terbium, gadolinium, and yttrium. I don’t know if the plant is operational yet (again) but I urge you to read your own words. If the output is to be just “hundreds of tons” but the plant is “multiple football fields in length doesn’t that tell you what the problems are in separating heavy rare earths from each other? Note by the way that the LAMP facility with a planned output capcacity of 22,000 metric tons per year of LREEs and mixes of them is more than 100 acres in area.

Announcements by rare earth juniors and processors tend to be vast oversimplifications not only of the technological problems but also of the TIME it takes to solve them, if they can be solved. The drivers in any business are cost and time.