Member Info for Jw45

Why this RNS is positive:

75% De-Risked: Freezing 75% of the flowsheet and moving it into formal DFS engineering proves that the core metallurgical uncertainty is dead.

Lower Upfront CAPEX: Cuts capital-intensive belt filters from 14 to 8 and slashes leach time from 32 to 8 hours, directly lowering the cost to build the plant.

Radically Shrunk Plant Footprint: The CIX circuit concentrates the rare earth liquid 9-fold, shrinking the final separation liquid flow from 300m3 per hr to less than 5m3 per hr. This makes the final processing circuit tiny and highly cost-effective.

Eliminated Production Steps: The team bypassed a major bottleneck. Instead of stopping to make a solid intermediate product, they now pipe liquid directly from CIX into final separation, cutting operational complexity and shipping costs.

Here’s the practical impact of the latest RNS:

• Impurity mass falls ~20%

At 44% TREO, impurities are 56 units per 100.

At 55% TREO, impurities are 45 per 100.

The drop is 11/56 ≈ 19.6% fewer impurities to remove. That’s substantial for circuits where impurities, not REE chemistry, are the bottleneck.

• Feed purity (>93% vs >90%) cuts “hard” contaminants by ~30%

Within the TREO stream, going from 90% to 93% means residual non-REE stuff falls from 10 → 7 per 100 TREO — a 30% relative reduction. Those last few percent are the hardest (Fe/Al/P, radionuclides, etc.), so this disproportionately helps reach 99.5% in the final oxides.

• Fewer separation stages + lower reagent burn

Cleaner feed usually means shorter SX/CIX trains, better phase disengagement, fewer crud/scale issues, and lower reagent consumption. Every trimmed stage compounds yield and purity gains.

• Flow reduction multiplies the effect

They’ve shrunk PLS from ~340 m³/h → 7–10 m³/h feeding final separation. That’s a ~97% cut in volume that needs “polishing,” making 99.5% control limits more achievable and cheaper at scale.

• Non-linearity near spec

Purity improvements near the top end aren’t linear; the last 0.5–1.0% is where impurities fight back. Starting cleaner shifts you onto the “easy” side of that curve.

Bottom line: that “+11% TREO” translates into ~20% less total impurity, ~30% fewer stubborn contaminants in the TREO stream, and a massive reduction in throughput to the final circuit — all of which materially raises the odds (and economics) of hitting 99.5% REO.