Northern Minerals has become the first heavy rare earth producer outside of China after starting up a pilot plant at its Browns Range project in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The official opening of the plant, attended by various Western Australia ministers, comes a year to the day since construction commenced.
Browns Range’s main products are dysprosium and terbium. The former is an “essential component in the success of the electric vehicle evolution”, according to Northern Minerals.
“As the only dysprosium producer outside China, Northern Minerals is well placed to become a significant, stable supplier of this important element,” the company said.
Both heavy rare earths are also used in wind turbines, industrial robots, air conditioning and many other new technologies in development.
Managing Director and CEO George Baulk said the company had been helped along the way by the federal government’s R&D Tax Incentive Scheme for “stimulating the emergence of new industries”.
The three-year pilot plant project will be used to assess the economic and technical feasibility of a full-scale development at Browns Range.
A total 172,080 tonnes of mineralised material at 1.19% total rare earth oxides (TREO), containing 2,047 t TREO, will be mined and stockpiled ready to be fed into the pilot plant. The plant will process 60,000 tonnes per year of this material through the beneficiation plant, and 3,200 t/y of xenotime concentrate at 20% TREO through the hydrometallurgical process.
The final product will contain 4.9 t of dysprosium in 590 t TREO within a mixed rare earth carbonate.
This is all a warm up for the full scale project, which will have a beneficiation plant able to process 585,000 t/y of ore and produce a high-grade mineral concentrate to feed into the hydrometallurgical plant. This process consists of a crushing and grinding circuit and combination of wet high gradient magnetic separation and flotation.
The overall beneficiation circuit delivers recoveries of 91% dysprosium and 87% TREO at a 20% TREO mineral concentrate grade.
The hydromet plant should produce 279 t of dysprosium contained with 3,127 t of TREO, in 6,000 t of mixed rare earth carbonate per year.
