Ucore Scales Up Demonstration Plant for Rare Earth...

Ucore Scales Up Demonstration Plant for Rare Earth Separation
https://www.akbizmag.com/industry/mining/ucore-scales-up-demonstration-plant-for-rare-earth-separation/

Snippets:

the finding puts them on a faster track to commercial deployment at a separation facility near Ketchikan

concluded that a RapidSX production plant can potentially have a two-thirds smaller footprint than a conventional solvent extraction facility with the same throughput.

Ucore says the redesign allows for enhanced capability to achieve broader objectives in 2022

At first, raw material would come from an extraction plant being developed in Saskatchewan by Vital Metals

Ucore is in the unique position of having access to one of the world’s most advanced and efficient solvent extraction-based REE separation technologies

The logical pathway was to expand the facility now so that we are ready to make the leap to commercialization within the Strategic Metals Complexes by early next year, along with the benefit of starting product qualification trials with our growing list of potential North American customers

The team aims to start product qualification trials by the end of 2022, producing saleable amounts of REE for alloy makers

As such, Ucore continues its ongoing engagement with Mech-Chem Associates to develop the specific engineering requirements for all process phases throughout 2022 and into 2023. The result will be a contract design package suitable to execute a design/build construction contract for the SMC, with production commencing in 2024.