Apr 15 2019
Texas Mineral Resources Corp. (TMRC), an exploration firm focusing on the heavy rare earths and a range of other precious elements and industrial minerals, takes pleasure in announcing that a consortium grouped by TMRC has successfully shown the potential to produce many high-purity and isolated rare earth minerals from Pennsylvania coal mining waste material.
The minerals were purified to a level of 99.0%, made available for fulfilling participant investigation, and contained dysprosium (Dy), scandium (Sc), neodymium (Nd), lanthanum (La), and cerium (Ce).
The results of Phase 1 were presented at the Department of Energy’s 2019 Annual Project Review Meeting for Crosscutting Research, Rare Earth Elements, Gasification Systems, and Transformative Power Generation on April 9th, 2019, in Pittsburgh, PA.
The objective of the TMRC consortium is to eventually set up a self-contained, modular, and portable continuous ion exchange (CIX)/continuous ion chromatography (CIC) pilot plant at a chosen Pennsylvania location and to determine the economic possibility of profitably producing rare earth minerals and saleable industrial mineral by-products recovered from Pennsylvania anthracite coal waste material.
We are pleased to share the accomplishments of our consortium with both the Department of Energy and our shareholders. Our consortium has applied for a Department of Energy Phase Two $20 million grant whose purpose would be to demonstrate the ability to scale up our production of material with the creation of a pilot plant. We strongly believe in the potential to profitably produce rare earth minerals as well as saleable industrial mineral byproducts from Pennsylvania anthracite coal waste. Creating value from waste is an environmental goal shared by all citizens, especially when considering the strategic nature of the minerals proposed to be produced. We are fully committed to work with local companies, capital sources and public officials in order to create potentially meaningful economic opportunity for an industry and region that for too long has been in a period of decline. DoE Secretary Rick Perry, who visited the consortium’s Pennsylvania project site in September 2017, has committed to aiding the coal industry and at TMRC we are doing our part in an effort which potentially creates a win-win for shareholders, the region and the United States.
Anthony Marchese, Chairman, TMRC.
TMRC’s Second Successful U.S. Government Grant
This is the second U.S. government award based on the production of rare earth minerals in which TMRC has recently participated. In September 2015, the U.S. DoE, through the DLA, granted the company a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) research contract. In July 2016, TMRC announced that it had successfully completed a demonstration-of-concept project to isolate and refine particular precious rare earth elements for the U.S. DLA Strategic Materials Division along with its joint venture partner K-Technologies, Inc.
In the bench-scale demonstration, TMRC and K-Tech effectively separated specific costly rare earths with a purity level ranging from 99.996% to 99.999% by using static column systems developed to offer the general design concepts for high use of CIX and CIC systems at larger scales.