UK-Australian mining firm Rio Tinto has started operations at the newly constructed scandium oxide commercial demonstration plant at its Fer et Titane (RTFT) metallurgical complex in Quebec.
The plant took six months to build and is ramping up to full production capacity of 3 t/yr of 99.99pc scandium oxide, which would be around 10-20pc of global production. Rio Tinto invested $6mn in construction and the Quebec government provided $650,000 under the province's critical and strategic metal development plan.
The project is the culmination of years of research and testing by the RTFT research and development centre. The scandium is extracted from waste streams from titanium dioxide production at the site. RTFT Sorel Tracy processes ore from the Havre-Saint-Pierre ilmenite mining complex in the east of the province to produce titanium dioxide feedstock, pig iron, steel and ferrous powders. This approach, which the company describes as full value mining, has been extended to other critical minerals. Rio Tinto announced in March that it is building a 20 t/yr plant to recover tellurium as a by-product of copper refining at its Kennecott mine in Salt Lake City, Utah, providing a new domestic supply source for thin-film cadmium telluride solar power.
RTFT is the first North American supply source for scandium oxide whose production was previously restricted to small by-product streams from mining operations in Asia-Pacific and Russia. Scandium oxide has been used for decades in niche electronics and defence applications, including scandium-aluminium aerospace alloys, and more recently in solid oxide fuel cells for clean energy generation. But the biggest growth area is in light-weight aluminium alloys for the space sector, commercial aviation and automotive, which require large volumes.
RTFT completed the first sale of scandium-aluminium alloy in March to Australian additive manufacturer and developer Amaero.
By Caroline Messecar
