Reduction of Rare Earth Oxides for Pure Rare Earth Element Production

The midstream processing of rare earth elements (REE’s) such as Ce, Nd, Pr, Dy, Tb, Gd and Sm are typically converted from the oxide into the fluoride or chloride, and then reduced using metallothermic reduction or electrolysis. This entire midstream process for production of REE’s is currently outsourced, with little to no commercial processors in the United States and nearly 95% of the market owned by China. Since the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine in 2018, bastnaesite ore is once again being mined in the U.S., however, it must be shipped out after beneficiation and concentration efforts in order to be refined into the oxide, and ultimately reduced into the metal form. For this reason, Terves has proposed to convert existing magnesium foundry capacity to create a domestic semi-continuous rare earth master alloy production operation. This proposed project will look at gadolinium metal production on the lab scale with a high purity (99.9%), that will run in conjunction with other Terves efforts to help accelerate the expansion to a domestic REE mid stream producer in the US. The semi-continuous process to produce high purity gadolinium with purities up to 99.9% will create a domestic source for the chosen rare earth metal that is used in the production of specialty defense equipment such as sonar, radar, and lasers, as well as commercial applications such as contrast agents for patients undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).