Dreadnought Resources Yields High Quality, Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Dreadnought Resources (ASX: DRE) received encouraging results from test work undertaken by Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

Dreadnought Resources had given ANSTO a sample of monazite concentrate taken from the Yin deposit within the company’s 100 per cent-owned Mangaroon rare earth element (REE) project in Western Australia.

ANSTO put the sample through metallurgical testing hoops via a conventional acid bake/leach process to produce a mixed rare earth carbonate (MREC).

MRECs are used as raw materials for midstream processors to separate individual rare earth oxides, in this case neodymium (Nd) and praseodymium (Pr).

Applying a conventional low-temperature acid bake/leach process, ANSTO achieved the following results:

o approx. 94 per cent recovery of Nd and Pr from concentrate through to MREC;

o MREC grade of 60.7 per cent total rare earth oxide (TREO) containing 16.3 per cent Nd2O3 and 4.4 per cent Pr6O11; and

o The NdPr oxide ratio is high at 34 per cent of the total TREO.

“This is a significant milestone for Dreadnought and the Yin REE project,” Dreadnought Resources managing director Dean Tuck said in the company’s ASX announcement.

“ANSTO is a world-leader in its field and has demonstrated that the monazite concentrate has excellent metallurgical recoveries using a conventional process that results in a high quality MREC.

“Ongoing metallurgical optimisation work is expected to further improve these results.

“With these results in hand, we are well placed to advance discussions with a range of downstream partners.”

 

TO READ THE FULL ANNOUNCEMENT: CLICK HERE