4 ms·
Looks promising but still only a mineral resource as opposed to a mineral reserve. Which means it may not be economical to mine amongst other the things. Lot e
by rmm 4y ago
Looks promising but still only a mineral resource as opposed to a mineral reserve. Which means it may not be economical to mine amongst other the things.
Lot easier to publish/announce resources and most don’t go anywhere. (Been a mining/mech engineer for a while now)
- yxhuvud 4y agoThe good part is that it is located in an area that is already planned for iron mining (with LOTS of existingt and past iron mining in the greater area), so the infrastructure needed is mostly there already.
- akiselev 4y agoThey already have infrastructure for moving the bulk material from the mines, but certainly not for extracting rare earth elements. It's an iron mine dating to pre-WWII so if they process the ore on site they're probably using either direct reduction or the newer electrolytic process. Neither of which have much in common with the liquid-liquid extraction process used for rare earth elements. It requires mixing the ore with an extractant (see D2EHPA or PC88A) into a nasty acidic slurry which is then separated into a aqueous layer containing the waste and a nonpolar solvent that strips the rare earth elements bound up with the extractant. All the different rare earth elements then have to be separated out of the nonpolar solvent. The process resembles uranium mining far more than iron mining.