RE: AGM20 Nov 2021 23:22
There you go again, opening your mouth on subjects you know nothing about !
The process's and certainly the major equipment at a Gold mine and RE mine are very similar, Primary crush, milling, gravity separation (spirals), flotation, cracking, dissolution, precipitation. dewatering and bagging. On a Gold circuit you also have Carbon regeneration, stripping and a Gold room.
The refining is the complicated bit, ie extracting the individual RE's from the concentrate, however it appears that Pensana are only pulling out the NdPr at Saltend by a propriety process ~ the remaining TREO concentrates look to be being sold as that a HREE rich and possibly La,Ce rich (if anybody wants them) by-product.
the 7 years IS a general rule of thumb for taking a mine from discovery into production, although not mandated, I know of mid sized mines doing it in under three years.
And LCM are not miners, they would not not have a clue, they have already gone down the gurgler once and are about to do so again.