The separation facilities at Mountain Pass are temporarily suspended subject to the resolution of waste water disposal issues. However, Molycorp has the capability of producing lanthanide concentrates as well as high-purity products in several different forms.

Bastnasite is selectively leached to separate the insoluble Cerium fraction from the other Lanthanide elements. The Cerium product is washed to remove any contaminants, filtered, dried and packaged according to customer specifications.

The dissolved Lanthanides proceed through impurity removal steps then to solvent extraction cells where a collector preferentially extracts the heavier elements and rejects the lighter fraction. The heavier fraction is separated at our Europium recovery facility where Europium is extracted as a high purity oxide. The lighter fraction may be precipitated, thickened, filtered, dried and packaged as Lanthanum concentrate or further purified via solvent extraction to produce high purity Lanthanum, Praseodymium or Neodymium products.

For more information on each phase of our operations please click on the links at left.