Rainbow Rare Earths has entered into an MoU with an unnamed chemicals group in South Africa to trial nitro phosphate extraction for its rare earth elements.
The experiments will take place in a phosphoric acid production plant near Johannesburg.
Rainbow will conduct the pilot study with the chemicals group, focusing on initial grade test work on processing stream material.
Rainbow will follow this up with a technical programme to confirm a flowsheet, working from findings from its Phalaborwa rare earths project in South Africa. This process will incorporate separation technologies licensed from K-Technologies Inc.
The South African miner has already completed initial preliminary sampling of the feedstock to be used in the process.
The feedstock has initial results of Total Rare Earth oxide grades of 0.81% total rare earth oxides, with a circa 27% weighting to neodymium and praseodymium. It also contains economic levels of terbium and dysprosium.
"The rare earths in this stream are contained within an acid solution in a ‘cracked form', which will allow us to apply the rare earths separation technology, thereby facilitating a simple process with significantly fewer extraction and separation steps than a traditional rare earth mining project," Rainbow Rare Earths chief executive George Bennett said.
The chemicals group will finance direct costs of the pilot study. Following the study, the chemicals group and Rainbow may negotiate a joint venture to process the rare earth oxides.
