Ucore Successfully Separates Entire Suite of Individual Rare Earth Elements at High Purity - Seite 2

"It's very gratifying to see the fruition of this work and achieve such a high level of success. It is exciting to think of the business opportunities this can create for Ucore and for Alaska," said Ken Collison, COO of Ucore. "The underlying MRT technology, while new to the REE industry, has a lengthy history of success in mining, with IBC SuperLig® installations now active world-wide. We look forward to deploying MRT as an efficient means of REE separation."

The REE separations occurred in a three step process, as illustrated below:

	Bokan PLS "Separation of REE's from non-REE's"
Step 1	Individual Separations: (Sc,Ce)
Step 2	Group Separation of the Lights: (Y,La,Pr,Nd)		Group Separation of the Heavies: (Sm,Eu,Gd,Tb,Dy,Ho,Er,Tm,Yb,Lu)
Step 3	Individual Separations: (Y,La,Pr,Nd,Sm,Eu,Gd,Tb,Dy,Ho,Er,Tm,Yb,Lu)

Greater than 99% of the REE's, as a group, were recovered from the PLS. REE-selective proprietary SuperLig® resin products were used to separate the REE's into a light plus yttrium (La, Pr, Nd + Y) group ("LREE + Y"); and a heavy + samarium (Sm-Lu) group ("HREE + Sm") and to make individual selective separations of the REE's in each group, as well as make earlier individual separations of Sc and Ce.

Elution of the bound REE's, as groups or individuals, from the SuperLig® columns was accomplished by small amounts of eluent (acid). This technique produces concentrated solutions of the pure metal(s) for easy and economical salt production that is compatible with the Ucore flow sheet. Lower production costs are obtained by making rare earth carbonates ("REC's"), which require minimal reagents and no heating. If desired, REC's can easily be converted to rare earth oxides ("REO's") by heating. Full load, wash and elution cycles were performed.