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Search Minerals Announces Successful Scale Up of Proprietary Metallurgical Process to Produce 98.9% Purity Rare Earth Oxide Product
VANCOUVER , Feb. 2, 2015 /CNW/ - Search Minerals Inc. ("Search" or the "Company") (TSXV: ...
About this update from Search Minerals Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"\n\n\nVANCOUVER, Feb. 2, 2015 /CNW/ - Search Minerals Inc. (\"Search\" or the \"Company\") (TSXV: SMY) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Alterra Resources Inc., are pleased to announce the completion of a scale up test of the Search Minerals Direct Extraction Process on Foxtrot resource (May 09, 2013: Technical Report on the Foxtrot Project - updated Preliminary Economic Assessment (NI 43-101 Report) to produce a high grade REE product for refining. The scale up test was performed at SGS Minerals, Canada (\"SGS\") with funding support provided by the Research & Development Corporation (\"RDC\") of Newfoundland and Labrador and from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (\"ACOA\").\n\nHighlights of the process: \n\n\nA channel sample of Foxtrot resource was crushed to 6 mesh (~3.45 mm) size and treated in a scaled up test of Search's Metallurgical Process for rare earth recovery (Jul 23, 2014 Search Minerals Announces Metallurgical Breakthrough for Rare Earth Recovery) \nThe channel sample contained 1.12% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO) including 0.183% Nd2O3, 0.0262% Dy2O3, and 0.151% Y2O3. \nThe crushed 6 mesh material was mixed with 100 kg/t of H2SO4 in a rotary contactor and then passed continuously through a pilot plant kiln for heating to 200 °C. The acid/ore mixture was easily handled and did not stick on the kiln internals. The material appeared as a dry sand product at the kiln discharge \nThe kiln product was water leached at 10% solids and 90 °C for 24 hours to extract the rare earth elements into solution. \nThe leach slurry was filtered to recover the leachate solution and produce a washed solid residue (waste product from the process). \nThe leachate was purified through simple pH adjustment with magnesium carbonate (MgCO3) to reject key impurities (Fe, Al, Si, Th, U). \nThe rare earth elements were recovered from the purified solution by addition of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). \nThe (unoptimized) recovery of the rare earths to the carbonate precipitate were:\n\n71% N \n68% D \n64% Y \nAn average recovery of 65% TREE/LREE/HREE\nThere is scope for increasing recoveries through optimization of the acid dosage, temperature and time of heating and particle size of the crushed material.  Recovery optimization will be undertaken at the demonstration pilot plant stage of development planned for 2015. \nTh...