Business
MOU signed with The Mosaic Company in Brazil
MOU signed with The Mosaic Company in Brazil.
About this update from Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd.
[{"type":"text","content":"\n\n\n17 July 2023\nRainbow Rare Earths Limited\n(\"Rainbow\" or \"the Company\")\nLSE: RBW\n \nMOU signed with The Mosaic Company in Brazil\nRainbow Rare Earths is pleased to announce that it has entered into a memorandum of understanding (\"MOU\") with The Mosaic Company (\"Mosaic\"), the world's leading integrated producer of concentrated phosphate and potash, to jointly develop a process flowsheet and conduct a preliminary economic assessment related to the extraction of rare earth elements from Mosaic's phosphogypsum stack in the Uberaba area of Minas Gerais in Brazil.\nHighlights\n· Uberaba phosphate slurry feed is sourced from a hard rock carbonatite similar to the Foskor carbonatite that originally fed Sasol's phosphoric acid plant at Phalaborwa\n· Rainbow expects the Uberaba stack to have a similar grade and rare earth element make-up as those at Phalaborwa due to the similarities of the feedstock\n· Rainbow plans to develop a process flowsheet in conjunction with Mosaic which will incorporate the proprietary technology developed at Phalaborwa in order to extract the rare earth elements\n· Rainbow and Mosaic will collaborate on the production of a preliminary economic assessment of this opportunity\nThe Uberaba phosphogypsum stack contains valuable rare earth elements that occur as by-products of phosphoric acid production. The Uberaba phosphogypsum material is similar to Rainbow's Phalaborwa project in South Africa in that it is based on a hardrock carbonatite phosphate deposit, which is mined to initially produce a phosphate slurry feed that is then processed into phosphoric acid. While the hardrock carbonatite does not contain rare earths in sufficient quantities to be mined for these elements alone, the plant processes it undergoes serve to concentrate the quantity of rare earths contained therein, resulting in higher concentrations of rare earths than are in the original hardrock.\nThis process also subjects the material to sulphuric acid and heat, which effectively lead to 'cracked' chemical phosphogypsum material at Phalaborwa and which is expected to have achieved the same at the Uberaba stack. The benefit of this is that it can render the rare earths associated with the phosphogypsum amenable to direct acid leaching, which allows...