Louisiana Rare Earth Extraction Facility Obtains DOE Funding

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Written by Eric Funderburk for IIR News Intelligence (Sugar Land, Texas)

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Summary

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded ElementUSA, working with the Colorado School of Mines, $67 million toward a project that will extract rare earth elements from bauxite residue at an alumina refinery in Louisiana.

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Rare Earth Boost

The U.S. is doing what it can to secure supplies of rare earth elements, those metals and minerals that are critical in modern technologies ranging from electric vehicles (EVs) to wind turbines to cell phones. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have supported projects aimed at domestic rare earth elements production, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently helped pave the way for a rare earth extraction project in Louisiana with $67 million in funding.

The award goes to ElementUSA and the Colorado School of Mines, which are developing an extraction and processing plant in Gramercy, Louisiana, that will separate rare earth elements from more than 30 million tons of bauxite residue found in the tailings of an alumina refinery owned by Atlantic Alumina Company (Atalco). The plant began operating in 1958, leaving decades worth of tailings available for rare earth extraction.

Targeted Elements

ElementUSA holds exclusive rights to the Atalco refinery's tailings and will be working with the Colorado School of Mines' Mines Waste to Value Center to create the most efficient process to separate and refine rare earth elements for domestic use. ElementUSA is specifically targeting:

• Neodymium, Praseodymium and Samarium - used in permanent magnets vital to EVs, cell phones, wind turbines and more. Praseodymium also is used as a ceramic pigment.
• Dysprosium and Terbium - add strength to permanent magnets and optimize their performance at high temperatures
• Yttrium - used in lasers and fiber optics. Fiber optic technology is crucial for hyperscale data centers, as seen in last week's multibillion-dollar deal for Corning to supply Amazon data centers with its fiber optic technologies.
• Gadolinium - crucial for X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies
• Lanthanum - used in a variety of specialized optical equipment, as a petroleum refining catalyst and as a key component in hydrogen fuel cells.

Other Recent Rare Earth Awards

The DOE's funding for the Louisiana project came only a few weeks another significant award from the department that went to USA Rare Earth LLC's rare earth magnet plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, construction of which is wrapping up. The funding supports USA Rare Earth's larger "mine-to-magnet" strategy, as the Stillwater plant will use material sourced from USA Rare Earth's planned Round Top open-pit rare earth mine and processing plant planned for West Texas. The mine received $14 million in state-level support from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund.

USA Rare Earth scored even more federal funding earlier this month when the Department of Commerce came through with $277 million in funding and up to $1.3 billion in secured loans through the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022. In addition to the Texas and Oklahoma projects, the funding also will be used to support another magnet plant planned for South Carolina, although this project isn't expected to break ground for a couple of years.

Key Takeaways

• The Department of Energy has awarded Element USA and the Colorado School of Mines $67 million for a rare earths extraction and processing plant in Louisiana.
• The plant will source rare earth elements from more than 30 million tons of bauxite residue from an alumina refinery
• The award comes not long after another DOE award to rare earths producer USA Rare Earth LLC, which also received funding from the Commerce Department.

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