ElementUSA, Colorado School of Mines win $67M award for rare earth processing plant
Company News · Mining.com ·
ElementUSA, partnering with the Colorado School of Mines, has won a $67 million US Department of Energy award to design and operate a rare earth element processing facility in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. The project uses a proprietary process to convert bauxite residue, a waste byproduct of alumina refining, into pig iron and a basket of critical minerals and heavy rare earths. At full scale, the company says the resource could supply 45-385% of US annual demand for gallium, scandium, yttrium, germanium, ytterbium, dysprosium and gadolinium.