Ucore’s rare earths separation demo plant on track for Q4 commissioning

Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV: UCU; OTC: UURAF) has made “significant strides” in the procurement and construction process of its commercial demonstration plant for testing the RapidSX rare earth element separation technology developed by Innovation Metals Corp. The facility is on track for commissioning in the fourth quarter of this year.

The test work, which is taking place at Ucore and Innovation Metals’ laboratory partner Kingston Process Metallurgy’s facility in Kingston, Ont., is part of Ucore’s strategic metals complex (SMC) technology deployment process. The program was enhanced after Ucore received an independent evaluation of the RapidSX REE technology, leading to almost a tripling in scope of the demonstration plant in July. Since then, most of the required equipment and components have been procured, as have the initial feedstocks of heavy and light rare earth elements.

Engineered design of the currently under construction 51-stage RapidSX REE demo plant. Credit: Ucore Rare Metals Inc.

The final engineered layout of the demo plant takes up nearly all of the 465-sq.-metre facility in Kingston. Constructing a plant within an existing building is the engineering process template that the commercialization team will replicate in  creating the first full-scale SMC, once the brownfield site selection process is finalized. This initial SMC is scheduled to produce 2,000 tonnes of total rare earth oxides by the end of 2024 and 5,000 tonnes by 2026.

“This process will demonstrate the unprecedented North American separation of tonnes of both heavy and light rare earth elements. It will then continue with end-user qualification trials throughout 2023 for Western entities seeking diversified and sustainable metallic supply chains as Ucore transitions to full-scale commercial mode with the construction of our first SMC,” stated Mike Schrider, Ucore’s VP and COO.

The rare earth separation demo plant is capable of processing all RapidSX splits required to produce individual elements of praseodymium, neodymium, terbium and dysprosium. It would have a parallel 51-stage conventional solvent extraction mixer/settler circuit that will match the RapidSX process’ configuration and enable direct head-to-head comparison of their performances. Once in commercial deployment, this would be one of the first modern technology platforms for separating heavy and light rare earths – as a replacement for solvent extraction.

Ucore shares were trading at 74¢ apiece at mid-afternoon Thursday in Toronto. Its shares have traded in a 52-week window of 53¢ and $1.25. It has a market cap of $36 million.