Texas Rare Earth Resources wins Defense Logistics Agency contract

Texas Rare Earth Resources Corp., an exploration company targeting the heavy rare earths, has been awarded a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) research contract from the United States Defense Logistics Agency's (DLA) Strategic Materials Division, Texas Rare Earth said late last week.

The DLA is the Department of Defense's largest logistics combat support agency, providing worldwide logistics support to the military, as well as several civilian agencies and foreign countries.

The DLA’s Strategic Materials Division is charged with maintaining U.S. knowledge on the supply chain of worldwide strategic and critical materials.

That responsibility stretches from the geological source to final assembly, with the Strategic Materials Division evaluating the capability of these supply chains to support national defense and essential civilian industries. The agency is also charged with developing mitigation solutions when access to materials is insufficient to provide support for national defense and emergency response.

Texas Rare Earth Resources will be working with its joint-venture partner K-Technologies to conduct research to demonstrate, at the bench-scale level, the ability to separate and refine yttrium oxide to a minimum of 99.999 percent purity.

The company will attempt to do that through continuous ion exchange (CIX) and continuous ion chromatography (CIC). The work under the contract is expected to be completed within 90 days of the awarding of the contract.

"Texas Rare Earth Resources is committed to developing a reliable source of critical rare earths here in the United States, as well as an effective means to separate them," Dan Gorski, Texas Rare Earth Resources' CEO, said. "We welcome the opportunity of demonstrating to the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency our ability to produce specific high-purity rare earth oxides they have selected using our CIX/CIC process."