alt Hacker NewsWhat's the general process for the initial separation of unwanted dirt? I've worked in a zinc smelter a long time ago, the initial stage was roasting, heating the ore to 900C to burn off unwanted components (such as sulfur, which went on to become sulfuric acid), and to melt other components.
I guess I'm surprised at the absence of flue stacks and cooling towers at the facility shown in the video.
Perhaps the facility in the video only shows "cleaner" downstream processing for marketing appeal, or separation processes are fundamentally different?
60 Minutes had some coverage of the beneficiation plant.[1] For rare earths, that's mostly grinding and sorting by density and magnetic properties. It's a large plant near the mine. Bags of rare earth ore worth about $120,000 per pallet come out, and those are transported to the Texas location for the next step, which has a lot more heat and chemistry.
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/60-minutes_rareearths-activit...