Geomega Obtains US Patent for Rare Earths Recycling

The Montreal-based Geomega Resources company said its patent entitled "A system and a method for metallurgical extraction of rare earth elements (REE) and niobium” has been approved for grant by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The company claims to be a developer of clean mining and recycling technology for rare earths, claiming that the technology was developed in-house for a rare earth elements deposit found near Montviel, Quebec. The same technology can be applied to a recycling process for end-of-life magnets.

Rare Earth Elements (REE) are a group of 15 elements called the "lanthanides" out of which 14 are naturally occurring and stable elements. Two other elements, Scandium (Sc) and Yttrium (Y) are often grouped with REE due to their similar properties. The company said on its website that it has partnered with other companies to collect end-of-life magnets to harvest RREs from that scrap stream. The company said that its European partner Rocklink collects about 16 metric tons of scrap magnets annually from 70 companies there.

"We have companies like Jobmasters near Toronto, who recently joined us in this initiative to collect more magnets," said Kiril Mugerman, Geomega's president and CEO. "They represent hundreds of clients - each one of those clients wants to collect rare earth magnets. Everybody is striving toward a zero-waste policy, which means they want to return whatever they don't use or send scrap back to the manufacturer. That manufacturer or distributor wants to send it back to a recycling plant, and that's where we come in."

Mugerman said. "The grant of this patent acknowledges that our unique process has been recognized and protected. The Montviel metallurgy research executed in 2014 and 2015 led to these patents and set the framework for how Geomega operates today committed to lowering the environmental footprint of processes to extract and separate REE, reagent regeneration, and minimizing the number of effluents and solid waste that are generated. The company is in discussions with potential partners to use this expertise in the metallurgical treatment of REE to help develop a Western supply chain."

The technology was developed by Dr. Pouya Hajiani, Geomega's chief technology officer, and tested in a laboratory environment, which calls "bench scale". The company added that the patent covers an approach to reducing the use of reagents while producing high recovery rates of REE and niobium.

"With rare earths supply chains under the microscope again, efforts are underway by the U.S. and Canadian governments to bring critical materials production back to North America, which would favor our company," Mugerman said.

"Coupled together with our ISR (Innord's Separation of REE) technology, Geomega could ultimately deliver a complete solution of primary mining, recycling, and separation all under one roof," Mugerman added. The company is moving from a demonstration plant to preliminary production, supplying so-called high-value rare earth to North America and the rest of the world.

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