US reinvents rare earth refining as China guards know-how

With Beijing keeping its rare earth refining technology, equipment and technicians at home, Washington is funding private refiners to develop new ways to process the strategic metals rather than copying Chinese methods.

A senior US official told Asia Times that American refiners would rely on their own innovation to make the country self-sufficient in critical minerals, and that she was confident they would succeed.

Industry experts, however, said some US projects would still have to pay high costs to learn China’s traditional extraction method, which Chinese firms have spent more than two decades perfecting.

“Over the last 20 years, we’ve developed a lot of innovation, but we didn’t develop the manufacturing know-how,” Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of energy at the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation of the US Department of Energy (DOE), told Asia Times at the Financial Times Metals & Mining Summit in London on October 15.

“We might develop the intellectual property, but we don’t execute on building the big factory. There’s definitely going to be an increased focus on getting innovation that starts and stays in the United States, and the ability to build out the critical mineral processing with new and innovative methods,” she said.

She said the US would not close the supply chain gap by doing what it had been doing for the past 20 years, but by finding new solutions and new ways of doing things.

Washington’s push comes as Beijing has steadily tightened its grip on rare earths, restricting exports of the metals as well as the technology and people needed to refine them.

In December 2023, Beijing banned exports of rare earth processing and magnet-making technologies. In June, it cut off supplies of China-origin dual-use items to US producers MP Materials and USA Rare Earth. Last month, it tightened exit rules to stop skilled technicians, including rare earth experts, from leaving the country.

Since last year, the Trump administration has taken a series of measures to boost the country’s capability in rare earth refining:

• In August 2025, the Pentagon awarded US$10 million to NioCorp’s Elk Creek project in Nebraska, which is set to become the first US niobium mine in late 2029. The project plans an on-site plant to process niobium, scandium and titanium and has tested separating rare earths from its ore. Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited the site on October 14, 2026.
• Earlier this year, the DOE set up the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation to bring together its research on mining, processing, metallurgy, recycling, magnets and semiconductors.
• On June 2, the office selected the Colorado School of Mines and Phoenix Tailings for US$134 million to build two rare earth demonstration facilities that turn mining and industrial waste into rare earth metals.
• On August 7, the office launched the US$100 million Providing Opportunities for Specialized Education in Critical Technologies (PROSPECT) initiative to train students.

Robertson said the US faces a workforce shortage in the critical mineral sector and that the PROSPECT initiative aims to double the number of mining and minerals graduates within two years.

“The US has a history of having problems and then finding solutions. Twenty years ago, we were the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Now we are the largest exporter of both,” she said. “We changed that not by competing with OPEC but by innovating in the US. We are going to attack critical minerals and processing with the same drive to solve the problem.”

Robertson did not say what new methods the US will use, but company disclosures point to continuous ion chromatography (CIC) and electrochemical separation.

In China, refiners dissolve the minerals in strong acid, mix the solution with kerosene and chemicals such as P507 and P204, and pass it through hundreds of mixing and settling tanks. A stronger acid then strips out each element so it can be precipitated.

US firms using CIC also dissolve minerals in acid, then dilute the solution with water and run it through resin-filled columns, where each element moves at its own speed and emerges separately. The US dropped chromatography in the 1950s due to cost concerns. With rare earths now dubbed the new gold, the cost is worth it.

In electrochemical separation, rare earths are dissolved in molten salt at about 700°C and an electric current is applied. As each element turns into metal at a slightly different voltage, they can be collected separately.

“I think the innovation will be divided. There are certain mainstream technologies that are relatively widely available, but in the rare earth and magnet value chain, this is a piece of process capability that the West has transferred to China and doesn’t have anymore,” said Michel Van Hoey, a senior partner at McKinsey, at the same panel.

He said China has continued to advance that capability over the past 40 years, and the West will have to catch up to close the gap if it wants to be independent of China.

US refiners are taking different approaches.

• Solvent extraction: MP Materials, NioCorp’s Elk Creek project, Aclara Resources Inc
• CIC: ReElement Technologies, USA Rare Earth, The Colorado School of Mines’ new facility
• Electrochemical separation: Phoenix Tailings

On Tuesday, Phoenix Tailings said it will build Freedom Separation, a US$375 million rare earth separation facility in Rochester, New York, to process more than 18,000 tons of feedstock into over 4,400 tons of separated rare earth oxides a year by 2028. In June, the company secured a US$500 million conditional loan from the Pentagon and a US$66 million DOE grant.

Japan’s yttrium crunch

Japan has felt the squeeze most. After Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last November that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan, Beijing on January 6 banned exports of dual-use items, including some rare earths, to Japanese military users.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Japan could run out of yttrium within months and had asked Washington to help press Beijing to ease its curbs.

Yttrium, a heat-resistant metal, coats jet engines and chipmaking equipment, and US defense supply chains rely on Japanese components that contain it. Yttrium oxide prices outside China have jumped 179-fold in two years to US$1,150 per kilogram, against US$9 in China, according to Argus.
 
“It is true that exports of yttrium have stalled not only to Japan but worldwide, causing a supply-demand crunch and soaring prices,” an official at Japan’s industry ministry told the media on Wednesday.
  
On October 13, Toronto-listed Aclara Resources said its planned heavy rare earth separation facility at the Port of Vinton in Louisiana would cost about US$494 million. In the second half of 2028, it is expected to produce about 1,350 tons of yttrium oxide a year, along with neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), dysprosium, terbium, gadolinium and samarium oxides.

Aclara will use large-scale solvent extraction to separate mixed rare earth carbonate shipped from its projects in Brazil and Chile. It’s unclear whether the company will source P507 and P204 extractants from China or buy more expensive substitutes in the US and Germany.

Asked by Asia Times whether Washington’s critical mineral strategy would work, Laura Konkel, senior counsel at law firm Akin Gump, said not every project in the US will succeed, but the sheer number of deals and an unprecedented scale of government capital make success more likely, with the onus now on the industry to deliver on timelines and milestones.

Read: For rare earth leverage, US caps aircraft parts licenses to China

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