The Laboratory Practice of Beneficiation Flowsheet Development for the Ashram Rare Earth Element Project

The surging worldwide demand for rare earth elements (REEs) and uncertainties in the global REE supply chain motivated the development of several processing flowsheets for Canadian REE deposits. The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy is essentially an industrialization plan for a net-zero economy that strives to ensure a domestic source of critical minerals and establish sectors like the production of electric car batteries. In this study, a best laboratory practice is used to add predictability to the Ashram Project located in northern Québec, Canada. The objective of this research project was to produce a bench-scale REE concentrate with high recovery and acceptable grade, and a high-grade concentrate with acceptable recovery while keeping reagent consumption low. The study aims to investigate the effect of different parameters, such as the grinding size and flotation reagent schemes on the beneficiation performance, and to optimize the process conditions for maximizing the REE recovery and grade while minimizing the REE losses to the tailings, all of this while considering the challenge of fine grinding required to liberate the REE minerals. Process mineralogy and beneficiation techniques such as heavy liquid separation and flotation were used.