Novel and Highly Efficient Separation Methods for Critical Rare Earth Elements

Description

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) seeks to provide responsive, best value supplies of related materials consistently to our Department of War (DoW) customers and other DoW stakeholders. DLA continually investigates a variety of critical minerals for more efficient means of their production, opportunities for recycling, and more competitive domestic supply chains which would lead to higher levels of innovation in current and future systems combined with benefits to other commercial and government technology applications. To reduce costly foreign reliance and/or single points of failure, DLA is looking for novel and highly efficient domestic capabilities to separate rare earth elements from mixed feedstocks. The end goal of the project would be for the development of domestic suppliers that separate industrial quantities of high purity rare earth oxides, salts, or metals, including Sc, Y, Nd/Pr, Sm, Gd, Tb, Dy, and others. New and novel ideas that would allow for competitive pricing relative to imported raw materials will have preference. Ideally, the production process would be modular and scalable. Advanced technology demonstrations for increasing production capacity, affordability and supply chain resiliency for coating techniques and processing are of high interest to DoW. These areas of materials and manufacturing technology provide potential opportunities toward achieving breakthrough advances for national defense. Proposed efforts funded under this topic may encompass diverse feedstocks and processing at any level that will result in increasing production capacity, affordability, and supply chain resiliency. Research and Development (R&D) efforts selected under this topic shall demonstrate and involve a degree of risk where the technical feasibility of the proposed work has not been fully established. Further, proposed efforts must be judged to be at a Technology and/or Manufacturing Readiness Level (TRL/MRL) 6 or less, but greater than TRL/MRL 3 to receive funding consideration. TRL 3. (Analytical and Experimental Critical Function and/or Characteristic Proof of Concept) TRL 6. (System/Subsystem Model or Prototype Demonstration in a Relevant Environment)