Special Report: Just as Red Mountain Mining reveals it is breaking into rare earths, US researchers have discovered that electric vehicles actually work better if you add more rare earths.
Linear Labs in Texas has improved its electric motors by using more permanent magnets.
Light rare earths neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) are used to make the high strength permanent magnets, but heavy rare earths like dysprosium also play a part.
Dysprosium makes magnets long lasting and able to retain efficiency at extremely high temperatures.
Late last year, dysprosium was labelled the “dark horse in the rare earth stakes” by New York investment bank Hallgarten and Company as the rapid growth in the electric vehicle market spurs higher projections for demand.
Linear Labs has found that by improving the magnet distribution within an electric motor, it boosts torque density by two times and power density by three times.
Nils Backeberg, deputy manager – steel alloys for Roskill, said both Linear Labs’ and Yasa Motors’ technologies utilised larger quantities of magnets for a given motor size.
“In addition to using less copper, motor performance specs are quoted by the company to have 10 per cent more range for a given battery size,” he said.
“In the current magnet technology, neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets lead the pack in terms of power-density, firmly setting rare earths as part of the future of high-performance and weight-critical electric motors.”
Lucrative market entry
Red Mountain Mining has negotiated itself a pretty lucrative deal to buy a heavy rare earths exploration project not too far from an already producing operation that presents it with attractive processing options.
The company has entered a three-stage earn-in and joint venture agreement with Unearthed Resources, which owns the Mt Mansbridge project in Western Australia.
Mt Mansbridge is located in the highly rare earths-prospective Tanami region of northern Western Australia just 40km from Australia’s newest heavy rare earths producer, Northern Minerals (ASX:NTU).
And soil sampling at the Mt Mansbridge project is already showing similarities to Northern Minerals’ Browns Range project.
Northern Minerals’ Browns Range processing facility is located 40km to the north-east of the Mt Mansbridge project and provides a potential low-cost pathway to toll treating economic quantities of rare earths discovered at the project.
Subject to the finalisation of due diligence by the Company, the drilling campaign at Mt Mansbridge is expected to begin soon.
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