The SUPREEMO project will capitalise on the knowledge generated by previous R&D projects – SecREEts, SUSMAGPRO, Enviree, Eurare, REE4EU ) – to establish the first sustainable and resilient pre-commercial European Rare Earth Elements (REEs) value chain (TRL7), leveraging European primary sources as feedstock. The SUPREEMO partners aim to develop sustainable, cost-competitive processing, refining, and RE permanent magnet production technologies in a responsible manner, adhering to local and international safety regulations. The developed solutions will bolster the European industrial leadership and enhance autonomy in critical strategic value chain, ensure a secure supply of raw materials.
This aim will be achieved by reaching specific objectives considering five main technology stages:
Objectives
- Development and optimisation of effective beneficiation technologies capable of treating variable ores of different REE mineralogy to obtain >50-70% gangue removal preventing from entering the downstream processes and reduce the cost of energy and reagents.
- Development and demonstration of advance froth floating process capable of producing high grade >35 % REE concentrate with recovery rate of >90%.
- Optimise the leaching operation with a sustainable process capable of extracting REEs from complex structures in an environmentally friendly and highly efficient way.
- Develop a completely circular and low cost process for selective recovery of REEs and removal of radioactive elements by using bio-based derived extractants and green diluents targeting near to zero waste with reduce number of steps.
- Optimise and develop highly efficient electrolysis cell for Rare Earth Alloy (REA) production and manufacturing of NdPr-based permanent magnets.
- Demonstrate the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the SUPREEMO process value-chain.
- Effectively communicate and disseminate the project’s results towards society, scientific and industry communities, and maximise the exploitation of the technologies towards market uptake.
Exploring potential European REEs resources
Despite the availability of relatively abundant resources in Europe, with incredible opportunity to seize, we are still almost 100 % dependent on REEs imports.
Although there are presently no mining exploitation activities for REEs’ in Europe, the continent has a tremendous potential to explore them. With more than 60 REE-occurrences and deposits known, the most well-known are located in Greenland, Sweden and Norway.
These deposits contain REE-reserves enough to secure the European REE demand for decades to come.
The SUPREEMO project
will be using REEs resources from:
Fen deposit (Norway) is the largest known light rare earth elements deposit in Europe. It consists mainly of carbonatite type minerals with rare earth minerals in the form of monazite (phosphate) and bastnaesite (fluorocarbonate).
