:: Innord Approved for Conditional Funding from the National Research Council of Canada

Geomega Resources Inc. is pleased to announce that Innord Inc., a private subsidiary controlled by GéoMégA, has been approved for conditional funding from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) for an amount of up to $350,000 over a period of 18 months to advance the scale up work on the ISR technology for recycling rare earth elements in the permanent magnet industry.

The ISR technology has been developed with focus on the permanent magnet industry which is the driver of the rare earth elements market. It is an eco-friendly alternative to rare earth production that is organic-solvent-free and versatile, or in other words, is applicable to both recycling and to concentrates from the mining industry. The technology offers recovering of the major reagents through its uniquely integrated recycling system and full removal of iron without any roasting and no CO₂ emission. The ISR separation technology is not dependant on metal ion distribution equilibrium between phases and does not suffer from phase inversion or hydrodynamic interface control which makes it easy to handle and a readily scalable technique compared to Solvent Extraction (SX). All these factors combined show promise for the ISR technology to offer a competitive alternative at a low capital cost to the solvent extraction method currently in use.

“In 2015, when we received our first support from NRC IRAP, we were in the infancy of the separation technology developments. Three years later we can see the progress achieved which will be advanced through this new funding. Canada is committed to clean technology initiatives and everything we have developed and demonstrated to date supports the global transition to a low-carbon, low-pollution and resource-efficient economy. We would like to thank NRC IRAP for their support which we believe will bring significant benefits to Canada in the field of rare earth elements and permanent magnets.” commented Kiril Mugerman, President and CEO of GéoMégA and Innord.