Critical Minerals
Rare earth elements and zircon and titanium dioxide are defined as critical minerals. They are defined as minerals essential to the economic development of industrialised countries. These minerals have a range of high-tech applications across a variety of sectors of growing economic and strategic significance, including:renewable energy;aerospace;defence technologies; automotive (particularly electric vehicles); telecommunications; agri-tech.
Rare Earth Elements
Rare-earth elements comprise the fifteen lanthanide series of elements (lanthanum (la), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (nd), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb) and lutetium (lu) as well as yttrium (Y). Scandium (Sc) is also commonly included in the rare-earth elements grouping.
Mineral Sands
Mineral Sands Heavy mineral sands contain valuable minerals in two core product streams: titanium minerals (ilmenite, leucoxene, rutile), and zircon. Other components include alumina-silicates, magnetite, iron, and tin, as well as occasional inclusions of radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium in small amounts.
The relative content of these minerals vary from deposit to deposit. In some cases, zircon is considered as a by-product, or co-product of titanium minerals production, less frequently, given typical assemblage characteristics, it is the principal product stream