Acid regeneration is a key component in the commercialization of HPA. As a result, as early as 2013, the Company should be in a position to process rare earth concentrates in order to individually extract such rare earth elements as dysprosium, erbium and yttrium, but also rare metals such as scandium and gallium.
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“We have now taken another important step that may enable Orbite to produce rare earths and rare metals as early as 2013, as the performance of the individual extraction units has now been demonstrated on a large scale with the help of our partners CMI and MEAB,” added Richard Boudreault, President and Chief Executive Officer of Orbite. “In addition, the acid regeneration system in our HPA production plant will allow rare earth and rare metal concentrates from third parties to be processed and separated, in parallel to our production of HPA.”
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As a point of clarification, the high purity plant which will be functional by early in 2013 will then produce small amounts of rare metal oxides. See the recent press release that independently confirms the process works. Note that the high purity plant is a smaller version of the SGA plant design that will completed by year end. You can guess I am long this stock.