American Resources Corp says it has received its final permit for its first rare earth and critical elements purification and isolation facility in Indiana, Kallanish reports. That is an “incremental milestone,” says ceo Mark Jensen in a statement.

The facility, currently under construction in Noblesville, Indiana, will be the first commercial-scale facility in the United States able to isolate and purify rare earth and battery metals from a multitude of feedstocks, says the company. It says its patented chromatography process and facilities will eliminate the US dependence on China for the final stage of critical and rare earth metal refining as the US establishes a domestic supply chain for battery and rare earth magnet metals. The plant is designed to process the high-value raw materials to a 99%+ purity level to be used again in new products for the electrification marketplace.

The Indiana plant will have two production trains or units leveraging one process and control centre. The first train will focus of recycling rare earth permanent magnets to recover, isolate and purify the REEs including neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium and to establish a circular life cycle and economy for those materials. The second production train will focus on battery metals and refining black mass to recover, isolate and purify cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese from waste products such as end-of-life lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles.

American Resources and its American Rare Earth division are funding the Indiana facility in leased space from existing capital and there is no need to raise additional funds. It is in the planning and development stage to build a larger facility in Noblesville with up to 12 different production trains and just 4.8 kilometres from the first plant.

The company is focused on the extraction and processing of metallurgical carbon used in steelmaking, critical and RE minerals for the EV market and reprocessed metal to be recycled. It has a growing portfolio of operations in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia involving metallurgical carbon and rare earth mineral deposits. It is headquartered in Fishers, Indiana.