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Geomega Subsidiary Acquires REE Feed Material for Volume Testing
Sep. 04, 2018 06:09AM PST
Critical MetalsGeomega is a mineral exploration and evaluation company focused on the discovery and sustainable development of economic deposits of metals in Québec.
Geomega Resources (TSXV:GMA) has announced that Innord Inc., a private subsidiary controlled by Geomega, has completed the assembly of its first scale up unit for processing magnetic residues containing the rare earth elements (REE) neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy).
Geomega is a mineral exploration and evaluation company focused on the discovery and sustainable development of economic deposits of metals in Québec.
As quoted from the press release:
The unit has been built with off-the-shelf equipment and is now ready for larger scale testing at Innord’s laboratory at the National Research Council Canada facilities. The 20-liter unit has been built on budget with an estimated cost of approximately C$20,000 and has the processing capacity of up to 7 kg per batch of recycling material. This unit includes most of the ISR processing features such as water recycling and acid recovery system which is currently estimated to occur at over 90 percent yield.
Work in 2018 has resulted in several improvements such as higher purities, lower residence time (approximately 8 hours) and a significant increase to the separation factor (Nd/Dy of approximately 30). With this first unit, work will focus on demonstration with larger batches and the objective to further increase the scale in 2019 to up to 200-liter unit. This will include increasing the purity to over 99.9 percent, increasing the recovery per run, further lowering the residence time and potentially increasing the separation factor. Table 1 below shows the progression over the years and some of the key objectives for 2019.
To begin testing the newly built unit, Innord acquired and has received over 200 kg of several types of magnetic residues with variable grades of rare earths which will allow it to produce over 100 kg of Nd and Dy once it is all processed. Discussions continue with several groups around the world to secure large volumes of magnetic residues and the outlook remains very positive for the supply to keep growing every year as more and more technologies that use large and easily recyclable magnets (e.g. wind turbines, electric vehicles, air conditioners, etc…) reach their end of life. Many global initiatives are focusing on recycling these products and Innord is well positioned with its ISR Technology to extract all the REE and cobalt in these magnets in a sustainable and price competitive way.