The company's Phase 4 Acid bake pilot plant successfully ran continuously over a four-day period at SGS Australia's metallurgical facility in Perth.

During that time about 2.6t of Nolan's material was processed.

A representative of Andritz Gouda attended the pilot, providing technical support, helping with setting operating parameters and collecting process data to feed into the design of the paddle dryer used for the acid bake and cooling stages of the process.

Those paddle dryers were a feature of Arafura's acid bake pilot. Paddle dryers are used in a variety of applications and can have advantages over rotary kilns.

The plant's feedstock, a NdPr-rich pre-leach residue generated from Arafura's Phase 3 Pre-leach pilot plant, was processed at a feed ra...