Rare earth minerals — essential in a wide range of items including magnetic resonance imaging, robots, electric vehicles and defense systems — are not all the same.
Weight is among the qualities that separate the 17 minerals. Light elements run from an atomic weight of 138.9 to 157.3. Heavy ones go between 158.9 and a shade less than 175. The heavy ones are scarcer and more difficult to separate from their ionic clay home, says Aaron Noble, a Virginia Tech professor and head of its mining and minerals engineering department.
A Canadian company called Aclara Resources has mines in Brazil and Chile that are full of the heavy minerals. On Wednesday, the company showed off its pilot manufacturing facility at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. The Alcara facility is intended to demonstrate how it separates the minerals, in part to acquire financing for a full-sized plant it is planning to build in Louisiana by 2028.
Aclara’s project at full force would supply 75% of the United States’ rare earth mineral needs, company spokesman Alonso Guzman said in a recent interview. Sourcing the materials has become more urgent in recent months, after disputes over tariffs led China, the world’s largest supplier, to impose its strictest ever controls on rare earth imports to the United States.
“There is a pretty developed strategy by the U.S. government to try to promote and develop alternative supply chains outside of China,” Guzman said.
The Aclara mines’ main products will be the heavy elements dysprosium and terbium, “which are two of the elements that have been basically restricted by the Chinese government over the last year,” he said. “The main issue with these elements is that close to a hundred percent of the global supply is coming from China. So when China is putting restrictions, you can create problems in the Western hemisphere.”
The company’s aim is to go “from mine to magnet,” controlling the entire supply chain, multiple Aclara officials said on Wednesday.
It is not the only such operation in the United States, either on the mining or production side, according to Noble and Christopher Saldaña, an academic now working in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation. It has an advantage, though, in that its mines yield heavy elements, whereas operations in the U.S. are mining only light minerals, Noble said.
“Aclara has this resource that’s more enriched in heavy rare earths that are much more scarce and much more difficult to separate and much more valuable,” Noble said. “They have this unique resource and then they also have this strategy, of going, like they say, mine to magnet, and then really spending a lot of attention in the midstream part of the process, where they do the separations and purifications, and that’s what they’re developing here.
“The technology that we’re working with them on is that midstream technology, which is a real missing link in the supply chain.”
The project also provides hands-on training and research opportunities for Virginia Tech students and faculty. Doctoral students, undergraduates and researchers are supporting the company’s process development and testing while helping refine its data collection and handling. The site employs 15 people.
“We’ve been working in this rare earth and critical mineral space for the last one or two decades, and so we have expertise here, but we also have a curriculum, and I think an approach to teaching that allows us to deliver the talents they need,” Noble said. “And I think that’s why this partnership is so special.
“It’s so cool because now we have this facility on campus where we can take students, with what we’ve taught them in the textbooks and in our labs, and we can say, hey, this is a real demonstration plant. You can learn how this operates and you can learn how this performs and how this scales.”
Also involved is Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy entity focused on science and engineering research.
“We also look at the Department of Energy and how we’re approaching the critical minerals problem,” Saldaña said to a group gathered to tour the facility. “And I think this is a great example of the kinds of partnerships and activities that we want to be seeing between innovative companies like ACARA, the Argonne National Laboratory as well as Virginia Tech.”
He added: “We have over a billion dollars on the street right now to really look at addressing this problem, and we’re hopeful to see projects like this one be great examples that others can follow from, so the work that you’re doing here is going to be really important.”
If all goes to plan, Aclara will be rolling full-scale in a couple of years, but the facility at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center will remain, Noble said.
“The way we’ve always talked about this is … a long-term partnership, and I think obviously in this industry there’s a critical need for technology, but I think even more important, there’s a critical need for talent,” Noble said. “And I think that’s one of the main reasons they wanted to partner with Virginia Tech, is getting that access to the talent pipeline.”