Ucore Announces:
Successfully separating holmium through lutetium from lanthanum through dysprosium on a scale of 1000s of liters and above the targeted purity of 99% with its RapidSX™ technology Demo Plant
Completion of second DOD Project Milestone
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSXV: UCU) (OTCQX: UURAF) ("Ucore" or the "Company") is pleased to report that it has completed the second milestone outlined in its US$4 million Other Transaction Agreement (the "OTA") with the US Department of Defense (the "DoD") at the Company's Commercialization and Demonstration Facility ("CDF") in Kingston, Ontario, utilizing its 52-Stage RapidSX™ Demonstration Plant ("Demo Plant") for the separation of mixed heavy and light rare earth elements ("REE") chemical concentrate feedstocks - i.e., mixed rare earth oxides (MREOs) and carbonates (MRECs).
Figure 1: Thousands of liters of separated rare earth chloride products: T5 Raffinate (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy), T2 Strip One Liquor (Ho, Y, Er, Tm, Yb) and T3 Strip Two Liquor (Yb, Lu) – each tank has a 17,400 liter capacity.
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The OTA is focused on the ultimate individual separation of the rare earth permanent magnet ("REPM") elements praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), terbium (Tb), and dysprosium (Dy) plus yttrium (Y) from US-friendly heavy MREO sources. Since completion of Demo Plant commissioning work in December 2023, the Company has been processing MREO under the OTA. Work under the Agreement is broken down into 10 milestones, with the completion of each milestone representing a significant step in unlocking the four primary REEs required to produce rare earth permanent magnets from a single MREO source - including highly sought after Dy which enables REPMs to operate in a high temperature environment and is nearly exclusively processed in China.
Ucore is working to change this narrative - the Company recently completed the second OTA milestone by successfully separating holmium through lutetium from lanthanum through dysprosium on a scale of 1000s of liters of separated raffinate and strip liquor products above the targeted purity of 99% (see Figure 1).
Rare earth separation and refining within the CDF is achieved through a series of separations utilizing the single RapidSX™ 52-stage Demo Plant (or "RapidSX™ Machine") for each separation[i] to isolate and purify individual rare earth REEs in combination with each of the six 17,400-liter tanks. Each of the ten OTA milestones correlates to a Project payment and seven of these relate to completion of specific separations with the two different heavy MREOs, with the remainder relating to the sourcing of feedstocks and further reporting of results. The Company expects to complete work under the OTA in Q3-2024 to be immediately followed by a similar demonstration with light MRECs through its recently announced $4.28 million Natural Resources Canada Program.
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