USF Polytechnic FIPR Institute Researchers Obtain Grant to Characterize Rare Earth Elements in Florida

A FIPR Institute research team, led by Dr. Jinrong (Patrick) Zhang, has been awarded grant funding for a new project to characterize the individual rare earth elements (REE) associated with phosphate resources in Florida. The FIPR Institute's research proposal, formally entitled, "Rare Earth Elements Characterization in Florida," was selected for funding as one of the in-house USF Polytechnic (USFP) Faculty/Staff Entrepreneurs Challenge Grant Program awards. Funded projects were publicly announced by Dr. Marshall Goodman, Vice President and CEO of USF Polytechnic, on November 17, 2010, as part of the USFP IT Colloquium held on the Lakeland campus.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements, including the lanthanum series and yttrium and scandium. REE are available in very limited supplies and are in high demand world-wide for technical applications such as fuel-production catalysts, core magnetic components in electric car batteries, and many military uses. For most of these applications, there are no substitute materials for REE, making their availability critical to national security and economy. At the present time, the United States faces a critical shortage of REE highlighted in a recent cover story in the journal, Industrial Minerals, "Shock and Ore: The Scramble for Rare Earth Self-Sufficiency, " June 2010.

As reported in the Industrial Minerals article, Chinese producers slashed prices of rare earth elements in the 1990's forcing other world producers, including the United States, to shut down their operations. China then drastically raised prices and limited exports so that they now control 95% of the world's REE production. An April 2010 report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stated that rebuilding the domestic rare earth supply chain, based in Mountain Pass, California, could take 15 years and will require large investments in infrastructure. Therefore, any additional U.S. source of rare earth elements is highly desirable.

Available data from decades-old, limited chemical and mineralogical analyses indicate that Florida phosphate deposits contain minute amounts of REE associated with the impurities in the phosphate matrix, but the specific distribution or abundance of the rare earths in phosphate deposits is unknown. While the rare earths in Florida phosphate may only be present in trace amounts, the high tonnage of phosphate mined and processed may allow for a significant amount of REE aggregate mass to be recovered.

The FIPR Institute's REE project will characterize the individual rare earth elements associated with phosphate resources in Florida by confirming earlier rare earths data and establishing a new data set for areas more recently mined and those for potential future mining. Additionally, the distribution of REE in mining and fertilizer production streams will be determined. Potentially the greatest phosphate-based source of rare earths may be in old phosphatic clay settling areas that have accumulated over many decades and occupy tens of thousands of acres in central Florida. The results of this project will be published and utilized to evaluate and develop potential new rare earth recovery methods.

Assisting Dr. Zhang in this one-year duration project are two co-Principal Investigators, Mike Bogan and Mike Lloyd, of the FIPR Institute. The team will hire and train a USF Analytical Chemistry graduate student to perform the required sample analyses.

December 2010