Lynas Rare Earths was awarded a A$14.8 million grant, which will enable the company to commercialise an industry-first rare earth carbonate refining process that has been developed by its in-house research and development team.
The new process has been tested at bench scale and has proven effective in producing a higher purity rare earth carbonate that can feed the Lynas Malaysia plant as well as the proposed US rare Earth processing facility.
The new process is expected to contribute to lower chemical consumption and processing costs.
The process will be installed during the construction of the company's new $500 million cracking and leaching plant in Kalgoorlie and the grant is expected to contribute about 50% of the implementation cost.
"We're excited to bring this world-first rare earth carbonate refining process to Kalgoorlie with the support of the Australian government," Lynas CEO Amanda Lacaze said.
"Its commercialisation is the culmination of significant research and development by our inhouse team.
"In keeping with our commitment to the efficient use of industry capital, this process has been designed to treat our own Mt Weld concentrate and concentrate from third party feedstock as other projects come on line in the future."
In the Northern Territory, Core Lithium was awarded a $6 million grant to investigate the potential for a future lithium hydroxide plant near the Finniss lithium mine.
Finniss will begin production next year and while concentrate will initially be exported, a scoping study is underway on downstream processing.
The scoping study will be followed up with feasibility studies with the support of the grant.
Australian Vanadium was successful in its application for a $3.69 million grant, which will allow the company to design, build and operation a vanadium battery electrolyte plant in WA and develop local vanadium redox flow battery prototypes.
The total cost of the project is $7.4 million.
Lynas shares surged 8.8% to $6.395, equal to a three-month high. Core jumped 10.2% to 27c, a six-week high, and Australian Vanadium was up 11.1% to 2c.
