Sask. Research Council designs, manufactures cell tech for rare earth element processing

The Government of Saskatchewan was emphatic in March about its intention to make Saskatchewan a global hub for the exploration and processing of valuable critical minerals and rare earth elements.

A major spoke in that hub was unveiled Thursday morning, when the government’s research and technology organization, the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC), announced it has designed and is manufacturing a component critical to rare earth element extraction.

The advanced tech is exclusively owned by the provincial government and makes Saskatchewan and Canada one of only a small number of jurisdictions in the world with a similar capability.

Media, SRC officials and employees gathered in an industrial fabrication facility on Millar Avenue in north Saskatoon, where commercial-scale solvent extraction cell technology, vital to next-level rare earth element processing, was unveiled.

While the technology was in a state of partial assembly, officials were quick to build up its importance. The extraction cell technology will separate rare earth elements one from another, making them much more valuable.

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An SRC processing facility, currently under construction and expected to open next year, will use the technology to process rare earth elements to a much higher level of refinement. The Millar Avenue fabrication facility will manufacture 140 of the cells for use in the processing facility.

SRC chief executive officer Mike Crabtree said the type of processing done there will allow the making of a “mid-stream” product that will increase the value of the elements by a factor of 10 to 20 times.

The extraction cells will take a liquid mixture, known as rare earth chloride, containing all 17 rare earth elements and separate them into individual rare earth oxides. Crabtree added that the processing facility, once up and running, will process minerals mined in Saskatchewan, other places in Canada and across North America.

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The elements are used in an ever-increasing number of contemporary products, including cellphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines. Rare earth elements also have applications in the defence industry.

“Saskatchewan has the expertise, the capability and the reserves of rare earths to become that processing hub,” Crabtree said, adding that the facility will be “the most environmentally sustainable of its kind in the world,” with safeguards in place to prevent the release of environmental contaminants.

Crabtree said rare earth elements will remain in high demand into the future because they’re an integral part of existing technology widely used in the world. We would be lost without it, he suggested.

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“They are that important to the industrial base of the planet.”

“Innovation and technology development are at the heart of what SRC does,” Minister Responsible for SRC Jeremy Harrison said in a news release. “The design, fabrication and automation of these solvent extraction cells right here in Saskatchewan is helping to develop an innovative and secure rare earth element supply chain in North America.”

Saskatchewan’s Rare Earth Processing Facility will use hydro-metallurgy, separation and metal smelting stages. It is expected to be fully operational late next year.

SRC is Canada’s second largest research and technology organization, with more than 350 employees and $277 million in annual revenue. It provides services and products to clients in 23 countries.

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