NioCorp demonstration plant begins rare earth recovery operations
NioCorp is beginning testing of rare earth's from the Elk Creek, NE. project.
By News Channel NebraskaELK CREEK - NioCorp is beginning testing of rare earth's from the Elk Creek, NE. project.
The testing is taking place in Quebec, Canada and is processing samples from Elk Creek. The demonstration plant project is intended to demonstrate that the Company can extract and separate rare earth elements from ore that NioCorp expects to mine from the Project site, subject to receipt of necessary project financing, and that its simplified process for potentially producing niobium, scandium, and titanium is technically and economically feasible.
The demonstration plant will process Elk Creek ore samples in three phases. Testing is expected to be completed over the next several weeks. NioCorp expects to publicly disclose testing results after each operational phase concludes.
The phases include:
1. Demonstrating a new approach to initial testing of the ore that NioCorp expects to mine from the project site, subject to receipt of necessary project funding, including calcination, initial leaching, and rare earth extraction.
2. Demonstrating an improved process for the second stage of leaching along with Niobium and Titanium separation.
3. The final phase is designed to demonstrate the technical viability of separating high-purity versions of several target magnetic rare earth products from Elk Creek ore samples, as well as confirming previously achieved high recovery rates for high-purity Scandium trioxide.
“Our team is very pleased to see the demonstration plant begin operations, and we intend to closely monitor every step of this process,” said Scott Honan. “Many of these processes have already been successfully tested at the bench scale."
Honan added that once operations have concluded and data analyzed, work can then turn to the design and engineering of the new process flow sheet, which is expected to be incorporated into an updated Elk Creek Project Feasibility Study that incorporates an economic analysis of separated rare earth oxide products and the simplified process flow sheet.