Jul 22 2020
USA Rare Earth, LLC reports that it will be supporting operations at its Round Top Heavy Rare Earth and Critical Mineral Project in Hudspeth County, West Texas, wholly powered by renewable energy.
Image Credit: Morakot Kawinchan/Shutterstock.com
USA Rare Earth is the funding and development partner of the Round Top Heavy Rare Earth and Critical Minerals Project in West Texas in collaboration with Texas Mineral Resources Corp.
West Texas has been acknowledged as one of the finest locations in the world for solar power production. In a year, Hudspeth County records 292 days of sunshine, with an average of sunshine of around 10 hours per day annually.
The flatlands to the north and west of Round Top Mountain are located at a height of about 4,000 feet. In the southwest Texas area, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy) has recorded annual average daily solar irradiance of over 5.5kWh/m2/day, grading the Round Top area in NREL’s high category for solar irradiance.
USA Rare Earth predicts that it will need around 15 MW to assist mining and processing, which will require a solar farm of about 45 acres, as per its evaluations. These figures could go up if the company wishes to move its sintered neo magnet manufacturing facility and related infrastructure to the Round Top Mountain site. For an outlook, the Round Top concession covers over 60,000 acres of land options and surface leases.
With more than 60% of the materials produced at Round Top being used in clean-tech and green-tech applications, we are now committing to extend that clean-green approach into how we design and operate the Round Top Mine.
Pini Althaus, Chief Executive Officer, USA Rare Earth, LLC
Mr Althaus continued, “Our 100% renewable energy plan means that USA Rare Earth will be producing materials for clean, green, renewable applications – using a process that employs clean, green, renewable power. In addition to powering our project, our approach will enable us to be a net provider of clean energy.”
“For too long, consumers in the U.S. and other industrial democracies have been sold a green fairy tale: the electrical vehicles we drive, the laptops and smart phones we use may be clean and green,” added Mr Althaus.
But what we are not told is that the materials mined and processed to make them often come from Chinese facilities that cause terrible pollution locally, destroy villages, harm the lives of the workers who produce them, have made the inhabitants in surrounding areas sick, and contribute to global pollution.
Pini Althaus, Chief Executive Officer, USA Rare Earth, LLC
Mr Althaus explained, “With today’s announcement, USA Rare Earth is making it clear—there’s a better way, a cleaner way, to produce clean and green materials using a clean, green process, without harming the environment and surrounding communities.”
The development of the Round Top project and other domestic rare earth projects is not just about the national security, economic and manufacturing issues that require immediate action to re-establish an independent supply chain, it is also about the United States and industrial democracies leading the way to ensure these critical materials are produced in an environmentally responsible manner.
Pini Althaus, Chief Executive Officer, USA Rare Earth, LLC
An environment-friendly, energy-efficient process will be used to separate the critical minerals and REEs obtained from the Round Top deposit.
USA Rare Earth employs a highly sophisticated mine-to-magnet approach to make sintered neo magnets by making use of feedstock from Round Top, recycled electronic scrap and process waste, and other NTIB-nation mines.
USARE plans to determine a similar mine-to-battery method for the lithium deposits at Round Top.
Similar to any other renewable energy source, Round Top Mountain will need either trading or energy storage to provide the surplus energy to the grid balanced by extracting power at night and during irregular periods of low irradiance in the region.