Molycorp Inc. (Greenwood Village, Colo.; www.molycorp.com) today announced that the sequential start-up of the new Project Phoenix rare earth manufacturing facility at its flagship Mountain Pass, California operation will begin this week and includes the following operations and plants:
• Active mining at a full mine production rate of approximately 2,800 short tons of fresh rare earth ore has been underway for several weeks.

• Mechanical completion of the new crushing facility has been achieved and fresh ore will be introduced.

• Mechanical completion of the initial cracking facility has been achieved, steam testing has been completed, and feedstock from stockpiled material will be fed into the system.

• Liquid natural gas (LNG) has been trucked to the site and offloaded into the onsite storage terminal. The LNG system associated with the combined heat and power (CHP) plant will be pressurized and the first test firing of the turbines in the CHP plant will occur. LNG is being used for start-up operations until pipeline natural gas becomes available upon completion of current construction of a feeder line to the facility, expected to be completed in April of this year.
Other operations in the Project Phoenix facility that will be brought online over the coming months include the following: milling and mineral extraction; expanded cracking; impurities removal; rare earth oxide separations; product finishing; and paste tailings processing and storage.
“The launch of Project Phoenix’s sequential start-up is occurring well ahead of our April 1 deadline, and represents the accomplishment of a critical milestone in our project,” said Mark A. Smith, Molycorp President and Chief Executive Officer. “When this new manufacturing facility is complete and running at full capacity, it will be the most technologically advanced, energy efficient, and environmentally superior rare earth facility in the world.”
Molycorp also confirmed that it remains on track to achieve its full Phase 1 annual production rate of 19,050 metric tons of rare earth oxide equivalent by the end of the third quarter of 2012. The Company’s achievement of Phase 1 production will come three months ahead of the original Dec. 31, 2012 deadline that was set when the project was launched in 2010.
No PDF is available for this article.