Rare Element Resources Enhances Extraction Technology

Rare Element Resources Ltd. (TSX:RES,NYSEMKT:REE) announced the completion of bench-scale testing on enhancements to its patent-pending thorium extraction technology. The company can now selectively precipitate “100% of the thorium while also removing 85% of the cerium, the lowest value rare earth element.”

As quoted in the press release:

This advancement significantly reduces the concentrate mass of material subject to further separation, thereby reducing costs, and results in an upgraded product that is nearly 40% by weight critical rare earths (CREE) and 99.999% pure rare earth oxide (REO).  In the second stage, a two-contact solvent extraction (SX) process is used to separate the contained rare earths into heavy rare earths (HREE) and light rare earths (LREE) to simplify the separation process and further reduce costs.

Jaye Pickarts, COO of Rare Element, commented:

Process advancements on our proprietary recovery process have significantly improved our product and technology breakthroughs have brought us successfully through the first step of elemental separation. Our decision to capture additional value for our shareholders by investigating elemental separation has led to a significant improvement in our thorium removal process that now allows us to also remove the majority of the cerium in a single-contact SX step.  By removing this lower value rare earth, we can reduce the mass that goes through separation, significantly reducing costs.  We then use SX to achieve high separation factors for heavy and light rare earths.  This represents a significant first step and will give us a great amount of flexibility, as we continue to investigate the next steps of separation and how to capture more value by generating the products that our customers’ need.

Click here to reade the full Rare Element Resources Ltd. (TSX:RES,NYSEMKT:REE) press release.