road accident, page-24

Production of neodymium metal

Neodymium(III) chloride is the most common starting compound for production of neodymium metal. NdCl3 is heated with ammonium chloride or ammonium fluoride and hydrofluoric acid or with alkali or alkaline earth metals in vacuum or argon atmosphere at 300-400 °C.

NdCl3 + 3 Li ? Nd + 3 LiCl

An alternative route is electrolysis of molten mixture of anhydrous NdCl3 and NaCl or KCl at temperatures about 700 °C. The mixture does melt at those temperatures, even though they are lower than the melting points of NdCl3 and KCl (~770 °C)

I would imagine praesodymium has a similar reduction process from its chloride.

Reason they use the chlorides.

NdCl3 quickly absorbs water and converts to NdCl3·6H2O hydrate, which is stable for storage, and can be converted back into NdCl3 when necessary. Simple rapid heating of the hydrate is not practical for that purpose because it causes hydrolysis with consequent production of Nd2O3.

Although NdCl3 itself does not have strong luminescence, it serves as a source of Nd3+ ions for various light emitting materials. The latter include Nd-YAG lasers and Nd-doped optical fiber amplifiers, which amplify light emitted by other lasers. The Nd-YAG laser emits infrared light at 1.064 micrometres and is the most popular solid-state laser.

They could have had a contract for NdCl3 who knows all communications have stated they will be providing customer specified preparations.

The accident was a bad thing but the load and the itemization of it I believe is good for shareholders.

And further to that SMSL now have their own little REE deposit at the spill site which in all likelihood has a greater % of REE than Mt Weld albeit that it is only a few square metres. lol.

I am optimistic about the quarterly results.