|
Risheng Magnets International Co., Ltd.
|
News
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Montreal-based rare earth elements (REE) development company Geomega Resources is making steady progress with research and development work on a proprietary technology that could have the power to reshape the rare earths industry.
"In theory, Geomega's new technology has the potential to revolutionize the REE industry and remove dependence on China – a huge issue in particular for the US, Japan, and South Korea. While there still is a lot of process optimization and engineering work ahead of us, we are confident that we will succeed to scale-up our technology to a commercial level," Geomega director, president and CEO Simon Britt told Mining Weekly Online on Friday.
Geomega is one of the only known companies developing an advanced technology for processing rare earths using no organic solvents, which is in stark contrast to China, which dominates the REE market with about 95% of global output.
The reason why China was able to attain its position of dominance, Britt explained, was owing to its lack of environmental control and cheaper labor, which made expensive solvent-based REE projects profitable. However, in the rest of the world, where there are in general stricter environmental protocols and where labor is not as cheap, it is all but impossible to compete on the global REE market.
However, should Geomega's new REE separation technology be successfully proven, China's grip on the global REE market could soon be something of the past. Molycorp Inc, in the US, and Lynas Corp, in Australia, are the main sources of REEs outside of China.
While the mining of REE orebodies is in itself not "difficult", it is the separation of saleable products comprising pure individual metals or compounds that poses the greatest challenge in this field. Market projections suggested that the demand for 'light' REEs, such as neodymium, europium, and 'heavy' REEs, such as terbium, dysprosium and yttrium, would exceed supply beyond 2020.
Demand for dysprosium could increase by 2 600% over the next 25 years and demand for neodymium could increase by as much as 700%.
