Molycorp, Inc. (Greenwood Village, Colo.; www.molycorp.com) today announced the start-up of its new heavy rare-earth concentrate facilities at Mountain Pass, Calif., which will produce heavy rare-earth concentrate from freshly mined Mountain Pass ore. The ore will then be processed into high-purity, custom-engineered heavy rare-earth products in Molycorp’s globally integrated production facilities.
Molycorp also announced that its on-site Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant will begin feeding low-cost, high efficiency electrical power and steam this week to its Mountain Pass facilities. Molycorp’s CHP plant is fueled by clean-burning natural gas fed to the facility by a recently completed natural gas lateral supply line that connects the facility to a nearby interstate natural gas pipeline.
Molycorp’s heavy rare-earth concentrate contains dysprosium, terbium, europium and other elements that will be further processed by the company into rare-earth oxides, metals, alloys and magnetic materials used in technologies such as hybrid electric vehicles, wind turbines, high efficiency appliances and motors, consumer electronics and other applications.
Molycorp currently produces high-purity products from the following rare earths: cerium, lanthanum, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, lutetium and ytterbium (with purity levels as high as 99.999% for some rare-earth products). The company also produces high-purity products from the following rare metals and transition metals: gallium, rhenium, indium, tantalum, niobium, zirconium, and yttrium (with purities as high as 99.999999% for some of these products).