I merely made a suggestion re' Mt Pass concentrate, which the Chinese want.
Looking through this thread, I don't get the unprovoked contentious attitude of ausheds. There's no reason for it whatsoever; this could just as easily be a pleasant and informative exchange. The dude has a problem, that's all I can say.
Bayan Obo, Mt Pass and Mt Weld are all carbonatites which host different (blends of) minerals.
Ausheds believes the fluorine content of Mt Pass makes it unattractive, claiming fluorine is difficult and expensive to remove. I don't think he's exactly right about that. I hope he isn't. Here's why:
There are two sources of fluoride: host and mineral.
If the host contains fluoride, I read that it can interfere with flotation of minerals, so I suspect that is where fluoride causes a problem. That strongly suggests one reason Mt Weld apatite (AP) ore is being stockpiled rather than processed along with CZ and LI ores: i.e., because apatite is a fluoride-containing host. Mt Pass, on the other hand, does NOT have a fluoride-containing host, being mainly barite, calcite and dolomite, IIUC. The fluoride in Mt Pass is only associated with the mineral and does not cause a flotation problem.
Looking at the respective concentrates, Mt Pass bastnaesite is a fluoride-containing mineral whereas Mt Weld monazite is not. The question then becomes: Does fluoride create a problem for the LAMP? I'm not sure, it may not be any problem there at all (HF would have to be scrubbed from the flue gas, but Lynas already scrubs the SOX). But certainly it is not an insurmountable problem or the fluoride-containing mineral bastnaesite would not be the major source of REEs that it is.
Finally, if Lynas does proceed to process AP ore, which seems certain, that concentrate will definitely contain fluoride as a host contaminant and the LAMP will have to be able to deal with it.
BOTTOM LINE: Fluoride is in Lynas's future. They will (have to) learn to deal with it.
As for my suggestion that Mt Pass might have been of interest to Lynas?
What was the selling price of Mt Pass? $20.5 million? Sounds like a really great deal to me now.
GLTA.
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