Aim-listed Rainbow Rare Earths has entered into an exclusive intellectual property licensing agreement with K-Technologies (K-Tech), of Florida, US, to use its rare earths separation technology in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

K-Tech has developed continuous ion exchange and continuous ion chromatography intellectual property (IP) technology that is suitable for use in the downstream separation of rare-earth elements into rare-earth oxides or carbonates in phosphogypsum applications, such as at Rainbow’s Phalaborwa asset, in South Africa.

The K-Tech process achieves the separation of rare-earth oxides in fewer stages with greater flexibility, leading to significant capital and operating expenditure savings, compared with traditional technology, which uses numerous solvent extraction (SX) steps to achieve the same results, Rainbow says.

Apart from the economic benefits, it mentions that the process eliminates the use of the toxic and highly flammable solvents and diluents required for SX, with considerable environmental and safety advantages for the Phalaborwa project.

Rainbow notes that the technology targets individual rare earths in solution and therefore the requirement to separate a full spectrum of rare-earth oxides is removed, creating considerable efficiencies in a processing circuit.

In the case of Phalaborwa, K-Tech is able to develop the IP to target the specific rare-earth oxides of value within the asset's gypsum stacks, namely neodymium and praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, which together account for virtually all of the value of the basket.

This would generate cost savings and simplify the overall separation process, allowing Rainbow to realise a higher value from the separated rare-earth products than would be realised from selling a mixed rare-earth carbonate as originally envisaged at Phalaborwa, the company says.

Rainbow has secured the exclusive IP licensing rights to the technology for use on the separation of rare-earth elements at phosphogypsum projects across the SADC region in Africa for an initial period of four years.

The IP rights, if deployed as envisaged at Phalaborwa and any other phosphogypsum projects, would remain in place for the life of each project.

Rainbow is not required to make an upfront payment for the technology. A licensing fee of up to $5.5-million will be paid for each project at which the technology is deployed as part of the construction capital.

"We believe this agreement provides Rainbow with a significant competitive advantage and that the IP is ideally suited to our Phalaborwa project, where it would enable us to focus on the separation of only the most valuable rare-earth oxides within the basket,” says Rainbow CEO George Bennet.