Ucore Produces 99.99% Dysprosium via SuperLig®-One Pilot Plant...

Ucore Produces 99.99% Dysprosium via SuperLig®-One Pilot Plant

August 15, 2016 – HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA – Ucore Rare Metals, Inc. (TSXV:UCU) (OTCQX:UURAF) (“Ucore” or the “Company”) is pleased to update on the continuing performance of the SuperLig®-One rare earth element (“REE”) separation pilot plant (the “Plant” or “SuperLig®-One Pilot Plant”.)

99.99% Dysprosium (“Dy”) has been produced from pregnant leach solution (“PLS”) derived from the Company’s Bokan-Dotson Ridge project in Alaska by the SuperLig®-One Molecular Recognition Technology (“MRT”) Pilot Plant at the IBC Advanced Technologies, Inc. (“IBC”) Utah facility.

The pure Dy was recovered from the samarium-dysprosium sub group (“Dy Sub-group”) of the heavy rare earth element (“HREE”) class consisting of samarium-lutetium (see Ucore Press Release (“PR”) dated July 5, 2016.)

“This is a significant metallurgical achievement,” said Jim McKenzie, President & CEO of Ucore. “The recovery of near quantitative purities of Dy at industrial scale, solely using American feedstock, and without the use of chemically-intensive SX technologies, are significant firsts for the industry. The isolation of Dy at an advanced pilot scale has also been one of mission-critical objectives of SuperLig®-One since the early blueprint phase nine short months ago, and we’re excited to complete this mission in such a concentrated time frame.”

“Dysprosium is ranked among the most critically important metals to America by the USDOE¹,” continued McKenzie. “This metal is deployed extensively in United States military, high technology and clean energy sectors, with 100% of the product currently originating from China. Together with commodities such as lithium and cobalt, dysprosium is also a lynchpin in the development of electric vehicles and hybrid EV’s. With SuperLig® products designed to recover Li and Co already on the shelf, our Dy ligand rounds out an already compelling platform for the rapidly growing low-emissions automotive sector.”

With the production of Dy at pilot scale now complete, Ucore will engage with a qualified third party to authenticate the Dy separation process and purity levels set out in this disclosure.

Separation and Recovery of High Purity Dysprosium – Separation of high purity Dy from the PLS is particularly noteworthy in that the purity of the Dy is 99.99% versus all other metals in the PLS, including Terbium (“Tb”) and Holmium (“Ho”) (“Next Door Neighbors.”) This achievement distinguishes the MRT process from other, less selective, technologies, such as solvent extraction, ion exchange and precipitation (“Legacy Separation Technologies”) that require extensive processing to separate Dy from its Next Door Neighbors. The MRT process makes possible the separation of Dy directly from the Dy Sub-group without the need to separate other individual REE first. 99%+ of the Dy originally present in the PLS was recovered. This exceptionally high recovery rate maximizes value and reduces wastage.

http://ucore.com/ucore-produces-99-99-dysprosium-via-superlig-one-pilot-plant