Brazilian Critical Minerals (ASX: BCM) has reported that initial bench-scale testing to enrich pregnant liquor solution (PLS) from its Ema ionic adsorbed clay (IAC) rare earths project has been completed at a US facility.
Rare Earth Technologies Inc (RETi) was able to increase the PLS grade in a 20-litre Ema sample from from 930 parts per million to 186,000ppm (or 18.6%) total rare earth oxides excluding cerium (TREO-Ce) using its proprietary separation and purification technology.
It then extracted major rare earth elements as high-purity separated oxides over a 24-minute cycle time.
The cerium depletion protocol removed 99.4% of cerium as the first step, followed by significant enrichment or elution of the remaining rare earth elements into minimal acid volume to achieve the 200x concentration.
Technically Superior Methodology
RETi’s separation system uses environmentally safe, non-toxic solvents and proprietary column chemistry to extract, separate, and purify rare-earth elements (REE) to a very high level, as much as 99.999%.
The technology selectively extracts the REEs at parts-per-million levels, enabling both group extraction and enrichment while remaining inert to non-REEs and impurities.
The process uses mineral acid as the eluent, eliminating the need for toxic, flammable organic solvents and providing significant environmental and safety benefits, and can also be optimised to streamline the separation process by isolating specific REEs.
The system is currently in commercial use in Europe and offers a simple, automated process with low chemical consumption and high rare earth enrichment efficiency.
Highly Purified Product
Brazilian Critical managing director Andrew Reid said the process further adds to Ema’s already high ESG credentials.
“RETi’s bench-scale tests indicated the technology is capable of achieving up to 200× upgrade from feed to product, delivering cleanly separated rare earth oxides with minimal impurity carryover in a single processing route,” he said.
“We have planned an independent validation later this year to determine potential scale and commercial application.”
RETi chief operating officer Steve Levin added that upgrading the PLS liquor had “favourably indicated” advancing to the next step of pilot-scale extraction.
“The BCM PLS solution is an excellent candidate for RETi’s two midstream rare earth processing solutions, demonstrating the ability to deliver highly purified light and heavy REE to the marketplace.”
