St Andrews is fortunate to be part of a consortium that recently landed a catalyst grant from NERC to look at Heavy Rare Earths. The purpose of the catalyst grant is to determine which questions are important to users in the HREE industries, which includes technological companies, but also financial institutions that need good advice on where to make sound investments. The first workshop will be held on 24th October at the British Geological Survey at Keyworth (near Nottingham). If any alumni with links to Rare Earths either through exploration, finance or applications are interested in attending, please let Adrian Finch ([email protected]) know. The rationale for the workshops and how the themes will develop is presented below. Adrian The first workshop will concentrate on Industry foresight and supply chain. It will identify future needs for REE. For example, if less Dy is used in permanent magnets in the future, a light REE deposit may match almost exactly the Nd and HREE profile needed by the permanent magnet industry. This workshop will address key questions raised by industry in order to have meaningful impact in the wider world. The second workshop will consider, ‘How does nature make the ideal rare earth ore deposits?’ It will bring together experts to consider the state of knowledge about how Nd and HREE are concentrated and separated from radioactive elements to form ores readily treated by low environmental-impact processing methods. It will identify research needed to improve our understanding of REE behaviour in natural systems and investigate whether it would be feasible in a full project. We will at this stage have two particular outputs: (a) To evaluate the potential for analyses, experiments and calculations to determine temperature ranges and fluid ligand mixes that optimise differential mobility of the various REE, Th and U. (b) To produce a hypothesis of the key protolith properties and weathering environments to generate “ion adsorption deposits”. So little is known about these, even though they are the main source of HREE, that the opportunity for world-leading research is high. The third workshop will use the results of the second workshop to consider the Geometallurgy of rare earths. Can the mechanisms that form REE deposits be adapted to process them more economically? The main problem in development of new REE deposits is finding efficient beneficiation and extraction techniques. Only a few REE minerals have ever been recovered commercially and very little is known about the environmental impacts of REE processing.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:03:34 +0000