Some time ago (posting of 1st February) I discussed the increasing importance of rare earths and mentioned an excellent review of the beneficiation of rare earth metals which had just been published in Minerals Engineering.
It was pleasing to hear today that this is the paper with the most downloads from ScienceDirect between January and March (click here for the top 25 downloaded papers).
Even more pleasing is that two of the McGill University authors, Adam Jordens and Kristian Waters, will be presenting a paper on the processing of a rare earth mineral deposit, using gravity and magnetic separation, at Physical Separation '13 which starts on June 20th.
It was pleasing to hear today that this is the paper with the most downloads from ScienceDirect between January and March (click here for the top 25 downloaded papers).
Even more pleasing is that two of the McGill University authors, Adam Jordens and Kristian Waters, will be presenting a paper on the processing of a rare earth mineral deposit, using gravity and magnetic separation, at Physical Separation '13 which starts on June 20th.
.jpg)
A great review. However the main challenge with rare earths is the demand for high purity single rare earth elements, so that processing of REE ores is not just about physical concentration but selectively recovering these elements from their host minerals. A review of the extractive metallurgy would be very publishable- anyone interested?
ReplyDeleteThat's great to hear and I think there is a message in that trend - in the case of rare earths the ability to beneficiate and process the ore downstream is much more important than the size of the resource itself. What's the point in a 20,30,40 year mine life if beneficiation of the particular mineralisation is unknown? We're not dealing with a tried and tested technology such as in base metals.
ReplyDeleteFortunately for our company we have a xenotime mineralisation that is proving to be relatively easy to beneficiate and rich in heavy rare earths as indicated in our latest public announcements. While we are optimising the beneficiation process our exploration team is busy building on the mineral inventory as we approach initial production in 2016.
Robert Sills, Northern Minerals, Australia
via Rare Earths Mining & Processing Group, LinkedIn