China currently owns and processes most of the world’s rare earth minerals. Ongoing tariff disputes are adding heat to an already hot race to catch up. The U.S. is making some progress, thanks to a new facility in Blacksburg.
Inside a small building at Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center, five scientists hold beakers and study chemical readings—all steps to separate some of the world’s most rare earth elements.
The site’s operation manager, William Hedley, holds up jars that contain different colored dust—green, blue, black and pink.
“So this is neodymium and praseodymium,” Hedley says. “And then here we have terbium and dysprosium.”
These elements are used to build magnets for electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, and other technologies.
This laboratory is operated by a Canadian-based company called Aclara, which owns ionic clay deposits in Brazil and Chile, which supply the unprocessed minerals for this facility.
Aaron Noble leads Virginia Tech’s mining and mineral engineering department. He and graduate students are providing expertise to the scientists.
“We’ve been studying the science and technology of rare earth separation for the past decade,” Noble said, at a recent event to officially launch the opening for the new Aclara facility.
Aclara opened this laboratory as a demonstration laboratory to find the best methods and techniques to separate the minerals.
The company is building a larger processing center in Louisiana, which Aclara says could supply 75 percent of the U.S.’s current market for some rare earth elements.
