JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Heavy rare earths explorer Texas Rare Earth Resources (TRER) has finalised the terms of a $7-million joint venture (JV) with chemical process development and applications company K-Technologies (K-Tech) to develop, refine and market K-Tech's continuous ion exchange (CIX) and continuous ion chromatography (CIC) technology, as it applies mostly to the extraction of rare-earth elements (REE) from native ores.

The JV would license the technology to TRER, as well as other rare earth production companies, and could elect to build and operate processing facilities to separate and purify mixed rare earth concentrates into individual purified rare earth oxides for other rare earth production companies in addition to TRER.

K-Tech would own 50.1% of the JV and TRER the remaining 49.9%. K-Tech also provided an exclusive royalty-free perpetual license of the CIX/CIC technology to the JV for the production of rare earths and other related products of value.

A board of managers would oversee the JV's operations, and would consist of one manager appointed by K-Tech, one manager appointed by TRER and a mutually-agreed upon outside manager.

The JV would provide a perpetual license of the CIX/CIC Technology to TRER for use in its own development projects, including its flagship Round Top project, in Hudspeth County, Texas, for a one-time licence fee of $5-million payable upon plant start-up.

"We are honored to be able to make this association with K-Tech. Work done to date has convinced us that CIX/CIC technology represents a significant advance in rare-earth processing and that the simplicity and efficiency of the process has the potential to make Round Top cost competitive with the Chinese,” TRER CEO Dan Gorski said.

K-Tech recently used its CIX and CIC process to create a mid-to-heavy readily marketable rare earth concentrate for TRER and was in the process of creating high-purity fully separated rare earth oxides.

In the past, K-Tech used its process to treat REE leach solutions from ores such as monazite and bastnaesite to produce separated REE products at the bench-scale and pilot-plant level. It had also recovered REE materials from phosphoric acid solutions at bench levels.

Historically, the rare earth industry used solvent extraction (SX) technology to produce individually purified rare earth products. The advantages of using K-Tech CIX/CIC technology, instead of SX, were likely many, including lower capital expenditure and lower operating expenditure.

The simplicity of the operation, smaller footprint, lack of large amounts of petroleum-based solvents and the overall mitigation of safety and environmental risks were also significant derisking factors of this process.

"We are excited to join hands with TRER in applying our CIX/CIC technology with a domestic company that has a truly great mineral ore body, which is particularly rich in heavy rare earths. We also look forward to working with them in providing this technology to other rare-earth projects around the world,” K-Tech CEO Tom Baroody noted.