Aclara expands demo facility to separate more types of rare earths
TSX-listed rare earths developer Aclara Resources is expanding the scope of its planned rare earths separation facility in Louisiana called Project Dynamo to incorporate separation capabilities for yttrium, gadolinium and samarium.
The company initially planned to only produce neodymium and praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium.
Accordingly, Aclara and its Aclara Technologies subsidiary have started to install additional solvent extraction circuits at their rare earths separation demonstration plant, which is located at Virginia Tech Corporate Research Centre, in Virginia. Aclara has doubled the physical footprint of the demonstration plant and plans to double the number of technical personnel supporting the facility.
The new circuits are being designed to demonstrate the separation of yttrium, gadolinium and samarium using feedstock representative of the Super-Pure Rare Earth Carbonate expected to be produced from Aclara's ionic clay deposits in Chile and Brazil.
"The expansion of Project Dynamo represents an important advancement of Aclara's strategy. In addition to building a supply chain for the rare earths required for permanent magnets, we are expanding into materials that are becoming critical to power generation, aerospace applications - including aircraft jet engines - and the infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence," says CEO Ramon Barua.
He mentions that yttrium is an especially compelling opportunity, given it comprises 50% of the rare earths composition at Aclara's Penco project, in Chile, and 30% of its Carina project, in Brazil. This provides Aclara with a differentiated resource position in a market where Western supply remains highly dependent on imports.
"The rapid growth of AI and data centres is driving significant investment in power generation infrastructure, including gas turbines, where yttrium plays an important role in high-temperature applications. By combining our resource base with separation capabilities in the US, we believe Aclara can become an important supplier into these strategic markets," Barua states.
Notably, the Penco project has received its environmental approval and is positioned to advance toward construction once Aclara secures the required funding.
