5619 DTC Parkway Suite 1000
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
Phone: +1 (303) 843-8040
Fax: +1 (303) 843-8082
email: info@molycorp.com
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HC1 Box 224, 67750 Bailey Road
Mountain Pass, CA 92366
Phone: (888) 577-7790 or (760) 856-7619
Fax: (760) 856-2344
Email: operations@molycorp.com
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8220 West Harrison Street, Tolleson, AZ 85353
Mailing address: P.O. Box 709, Tolleson, AZ 85353-0709
tel: (623) 936-1481
fax: (623) 936-5802
email: randall.ice@molycorp.com
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Technology Is Driving Molycorp’s – and the Industry’s – Future Posted on 2/22/2012 12:46:00 PM
A big part of what is driving the growth and profitability of Molycorp is our strong emphasis on developing new and better technologies across our manufacturing supply chain. In fact, our success in technological innovation is what has positioned us to become the world’s most energy efficient, environmentally superior, and lowest-cost rare earth producer.
The revolutionary rare earth process improvements that Molycorp scientists have pioneered, and which are being built into our new, state-of-the-art processing facility at Mountain Pass, will deliver extraordinary benefits both to our Company and to the world:
- Metallurgical and chemical process improvements will enable us to produce the same amount of product using only one-half the amount of ore as before. This greatly extends the life of our rare earth resource at Mountain Pass.
- We will achieve near-zero wastewater discharge operations at Mountain Pass by recycling virtually all of the water that we use in producing rare earth materials.
- We will regenerate our own chemical reagents that are needed for rare earth extraction processes, which will significantly reduce the amount of reagents needed in our processes.
- Our breakthrough rare earth “cracking” technology will enable us to simultaneously process multiple rare earth-bearing minerals, including the bastnasite and monazite that are present in our current Mountain Pass ore body. This will allow us to increase our production of heavy rare earths (HREEs) by an estimated 2-4 times. It also gives us expanded capabilities to potentially process rare earth concentrates from other deposits around the world.
- We will produce our own on-site power at lower cost and with higher efficiency and greater reliability using a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant that runs on clean-burning natural gas.
- We will remove virtually all of the water from our mine tailings and will deposit our tailings as structurally solid layers in a long-term tailings disposal facility on our property – a much safer and environmentally sound methodology.
Technology innovation also is a key driver of Molycorp’s growth in the downstream markets in which we are operating:
- Our proprietary XSORBXTM water treatment and purification technology is enabling us to move our cerium into high-volume, high-margin markets with enormous potential for future growth. The XSORBXTM technology is also revolutionary in terms of efficacy in treating various wastewater streams.
- Our recently announced joint venture with Daido Steel and Mitsubishi Corp. will utilize next-generation technologies to manufacture neodymium-iron-boron magnets that use less dysprosium – a heavy rare earth that is truly rare.
- As early stage investors in Boulder Wind Power (BWP), we are big believers in BWP’s highly efficient, dysprosium-free, permanent magnet generator, wind turbine technology. We see this technology as key to truly cost-competitive wind power while reducing the reliance on dysprosium for this critical application.
These are all transformative technologies that vastly improve our capabilities, our environmental performance, and our competitiveness. But they also have the potential to re-define industry practices around the globe. From the U.S. Department of Energy’s recently updated Critical Materials Strategy to this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos, governments and industries around the world are emphasizing the importance of rare earth material conservation and recycling, particularly in relation to the magnetic and heavy rare earths.
Molycorp intends to help lead the technology revolution in these and other arenas. I hope to see all players in rare earth industry work to increase efficiencies in how they process and use these critical materials. Technological innovation is the key to the industry's future success. |
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