Rare Earth Exchanges

UK Government Ploughs £15 million into Rare Earths Ventures, Including Sourcing Rare Earths from Volcanoes

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Hightlights

  • UK invests £15 million in rare earth extraction ventures.
  • Efforts focus on sustainable sourcing from volcanoes and waste.
  • Projects aim to enhance UK’s critical mineral supply chain.

Innovate UK (opens in a new tab), the United Kingdom’s innovation agency providing capital and support to organizations to make new products and services just awarded a £3.5 million grant to aid a project that will extract rare minerals and elements directly from volcano plumes as well as from mining waste. Involving nine various partnerships, the effort represents the ongoing move of Western governments to bring back Rare Earth Elements (REEs) sourcing and initiative. Part of an attempt to reconfigure the global supply chain for REEs which now obviously favors the People’s Republic of China.

Part of the CLIMATES (Circular critical materials supply chains) programme (opens in a new tab)—a £15 million investment delivered by Innovate UK seeking to strengthen the UK’s supply chain resilience within critical minerals.

Rare Earth Exchanges delineates the projects, and key players:

Rare Earth Project Summary
Ascension Earth Resources A partnership between Marriott Well Engineering (opens in a new tab) and Management Services and the University of Oxford to assess the potential for Rare Earth Elements from volcanic tuffs on Ascension Island.
Mormair A project led by the Materials Processing Institute (opens in a new tab) to prove the viability of recovering Rare Earth Elements from coal-fly-ash.
Nanomox A pilot led by Mkango Rare Earths UK (opens in a new tab) to explore a potentially sustainable approach to iron extraction from end-of-life magnets.
Geolithical A project led by the University of Exeter (opens in a new tab) investigating the potential for a circular supply chain for high-strength strontium ferrit (ceramic) magnets.
Ionic Technologies A collaboration between the Materials Processing Institute (opens in a new tab) and Swansea University (opens in a new tab) to enhance the recycling of end-of-life magnets used in offshore wind turbines.
Materials Nexus A project led by the University of Sheffield (opens in a new tab) that aims to use AI and quantum simulations to develop improved magnet materials that rely less on Rare Earth Elements.
HyProMag A partnership between Less Common Metals (opens in a new tab), Adey Innovation (opens in a new tab) and the University of Birmingham (opens in a new tab), commercializing a process developed by the university to liberate magnets from end-of-life components.
Less Common Metals A separate project from Ionic Technologies to develop high-quality agents using 100% recycled and fully traceable Rare Earth Elements.
Altilium Metals A project from the University of Exeter extracting Rare Earth Elements from waste materials from mining operations.

According to Mike Biddle, Exec (opens in a new tab) Director for Net Zero at Innovate UK, says, “An electric vehicle and many green technologies not only requires Cobalt, Lithium and Graphite for the battery but also Rare Earth Elements for the high-performance permanent magnets used in the electric motors. The innovative partnerships we are funding will explore novel ways to support our supply of these Rare Earth Elements in the UK and have enormous potential. Backing from Innovate UK will accelerate their work towards commercialization.”

Minister for Industry, Sarah Jones MP said: “Rare earth elements play a crucial role in advanced manufacturing, including electric vehicles and wind turbines, so it’s excellent news that the CLIMATES fund is continuing to leverage our world-leading expertise in R&D and making supply chains more resilient.

“Long-term, sustainable economic growth is this government’s central mission and we’re taking immediate steps to increase investment right across the UK, helping to support local skilled jobs and raising living standards in all our communities.”

See the link for more details (opens in a new tab).

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