Avalon proves hydrometallurgical process to extract rare earths

Avalon Rare Metals is making good progress on metallurgical process development for the Nechalacho rare earth element (REE) deposit, Thor Lake, NWT, Canada. Following the successful development of a flotation process for producing an REE mineral concentrate in 2009 (company news release of July 20), recent work has focused on a hydrometallurgical process to further upgrade the REE into a chemical concentrate. Avalon has now successfully established a hydrometallurgical process, proven numerous times in the laboratory, for extracting the REE from the mineral concentrates, bringing them into solution so that they can be upgraded by SX and precipitated as a chemical (carbonate) concentrate.  (more…)