Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has successfully completed the first phase of extraction circuit testing during its SX-1 i synthetic monazite trials at the Demo Plant. SX-1 is
designed to separate the heavy REE ("HREE") from the light REE ("LREE"); the results showed that the target separation was achieved and could be enhanced by further tuning of the operational parameters ­ which is the specific objective of the commissioning trials. Solvent extraction by RapidSXTM is highly effective, efficient, adaptable, and easy to implement in contrast to conventional mixer settlers. Once commissioned, the Demo Plant is designed to demonstrate the techno-economic
advantages, scale-up (currently projected at 6X), and commercial durability of the RapidSXTM technology platform. The Demo plant will process tens of tonnes of North
American-friendly sources of mixed rare earth chemical concentrates over thousands of run-time hours in a simulated production environment. The planned output products are high-purity NdPr, praseodymium, neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium REEs, to be incorporated into the early stages of OEM qualification trials in Kingston coupled with demonstration and verification trials in Louisiana.