The Florida State University Research Foundation, Inc

Thiele Kaolin Company

W Crawford Elliott

Daniel Joseph Gardner

Ed Riley

Prakash B Malla

Prakash Malla

David Shafer

Dominique S Kwong-moses

J Marion Wampler

Described herein are technologies for bauxite or kaolin mining operations. A detector is used to detect the presence of a pathfinder element or radioactivity indicating a presence of a rare-earth element. Once the pathfinder element or radioactivity is detected, the mined material is segregated from material mined in which a pathfinder element or radioactivity was not detected. Rare-earth elements are extracted from the segregated material. Once the rare-earth elements are extracted, the material is returned to normal mining operation processing steps.

Identifying and extracting rare earth elements from mining operations

Described herein are technologies for concentrating rare-earth elements from a heavy fraction of grit in gangue produced in kaolin mining. In some examples, grit is separated as a non-clay fraction of gangue produced in a kaolin mining operation. The grit is separated into a heavy mineral grit sub-fraction and a light mineral grit sub-fraction. Rare-earth elements, particularly heavy rare-earth elements, are thereafter extracted from the heavy mineral grit sub-fraction using various extraction technologies.

Extracting rare-earth elements from a gangue heavy fraction

Growing community of inventors

Atlanta, GA, United States of America

W Crawford Elliott