Mountain pass

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View of the mine from the highway

Mountain Pass is a settlement and a mine for Seltenenerdmetalle in San Bernardino County in the US state of California , near the border with the state of Nevada . It is located on Clark Mountain in the south of the Mescal Range at an altitude of 1,443 meters on Interstate Highway 15 , about 50 kilometers northeast of Baker and 80 kilometers southwest of Las Vegas .

mine

In Mountain Pass there is an important mine for the extraction of rare earth metals owned by MP Materials. It covers around 22 hectares in the open pit .

The ore of the mine, which consists mainly of bastnasite and partly also of monazite , contains cerium (49 percent), lanthanum (33 percent), neodymium (12.5 percent), praseodymium (4 percent), samarium (1 percent) and others higher rare earth metals. This used to be digested using sulfuric acid , nitric acid , hydrochloric acid , ammonia , caustic soda and other chemicals, which led to a large amount of wastewater.

history

The carbonatite complex was discovered almost by accident in April 1949 when two prospectors with a borrowed Geiger counter found a site where they suspected radioactive uranium . However, ore samples showed bastnasite . One of the two discoverers made the Molybdenum Corporation of America aware of the find and later worked for the company as a metallurgist. MCA acquired the mining rights in February 1950. A much larger deposit of non-radioactive bastnasite was found in the adjacent area by the United States Geological Survey . This deposit was located in the area of ​​a small gold mine that MCA bought along with the rights and the operating facility. The company subsequently acquired other adjacent properties. MCA changed its name to Molycorp in 1974, was bought by Unocal in 1977 and was merged with Chevron Corporation in 2005 .

Molycorp dominated the rare earth element market for the next twenty years, and for decades all of the world's europium production was sourced from Mountain Pass.

The mine was shut down in 2002 after environmental regulations could not be implemented profitably after a serious accident in 1998. At that time, around a billion liters of radioactive and chemically contaminated waste water from leaky catchment basins had drained into a dried-up salt lake on the edge of the Mojave National Preserve east of the mine.

Due to increased world market prices and to reduce the dependence on China , a newly founded company bought the mine from Chevron under the name Molycorp in 2008 . It has been in operation again since 2010 and was expanded to meet modern standards by the end of 2013, including the treatment of wastewater.

The planned annual capacity is 19,050 t rare earth oxides. Molycorp used new chemical technologies, based solely on hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, and can thus significantly reduce the amount of wastewater. The resulting salts are to be split back by chlor-alkali electrolysis and partly reused. The optimistic plans of large investments in a further increase in production were reduced in 2013 because world market prices for rare earths fell again after a price shock in 2010. At the same time, the demand for rare earths also fell. That's why the mine has never been in the black from reopening in 2010 until early 2015.

On June 25, 2015, Molycorp filed for bankruptcy under bankruptcy proceedings . The Mountain Pass Mine will continue to operate for the duration of the proceedings. In July 2017, the company was taken over by two investment funds and renamed MP Materials.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mountain Pass in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
  2. ^ Margret S. Woyski: Petrology of the Mountain Pass Carbonite Complex - A Review . In: Donald L. Fife, Arthur R. Brown (Eds.): Geology and Mineral Wealth of the California Desert . South Coast Geological Society, 1980, pp. 367-378
  3. ↑ C&EN, Vol. 88, No. 35, August 30, 2010, p. 9–12  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: dead link / pubs.acs.org  
  4. ^ A b Warren N. Warhol: Molycorp's Mountain Pass Operations . In: Donald L. Fife, Arthur R. Brown (Eds.): Geology and Mineral Wealth of the California Desert . South Coast Geological Society, 1980, pp 359-366
  5. ↑ David Jessey: Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine ( March 13, 2014 memento on the Internet Archive ) , California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, accessed November 1, 2010
  6. ↑ a b c Molycorp: Mountain Pass ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.molycorp.com
  7. ↑ Popular Mechanics: One American Mine Versus China's Rare Earths Dominance , January 14, 2013
  8. ↑ Lisa Margonelli: Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret . In: The Atlantic , May 2009
  9. ↑ China stops delivery of rare earths , derstandard.at, September 24, 2010, 2:06 pm
  10. ↑ Molycorp: Molycorp Announces Mechanical Completions of Mountain Pass Units ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press release of October 2, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.molycorp.com
  11. ↑ a b Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials: Current BGR research: China's share of global rare earth production is falling only slowly , March 12, 2014
  12. ^ Forbes: What 60 Minutes Got Wrong About Rare Earths And China , March 23, 2015
  13. ↑ Prime Clerk: Molycorp, Inc. (15-11357)
  14. ^ Molycorp, Inc. Receives Court Approval for Interim Financing; Company Has $ 22 Million in New Funds to Support Operations , July 2, 2015
  15. ↑ MP Materials: about (accessed June 3, 2019)

Coordinates: 35 ° 28 ′ 39.1 ″  N , 115 ° 32 ′ 29.1 ″  W.