Rosatom rare earth phytomining plausible but commercially premature: expert

Russian state-owned atomic company Rosatom has claimed a 65%-85% rare earth element recovery rate with lab-scale phytomining, but an REE expert cautions the company's self-declared milestone still lacks peer review, detailed public data and industrial performance testing.

While Rosatom's June announcement is scientifically plausible, it is "most certainly commercially premature," Daniel O'Connor, co-founder and CEO of Utah-based Rare Earth Exchanges, told Platts. "The reported laboratory recoveries of 65%-85% have not yet been independently validated or supported by published mass balances or commercial-scale data. We, of course, need peer review first, even at the academic or experimental stage."

Rosatom on June 30 said it had tested a few of the 22 plant species known for their ability to absorb REEs from soil and accumulate them in stems and leaves. It said it focused on identifying those with the highest phytoextraction potential and rapid growth, while also designing chelating agents that could enhance phytoextraction. Using such plants, known as hyperaccumulators, across industrial waste dumps and tailings opens opportunities to obtain additional volumes of rare earth metals with minimal capital investment, it added. Also, unlike conventional mining, which is energy-intensive, disrupts landscapes, and generates toxic waste, phytomining relies on photosynthesis and minimizes land disturbance, it said.

Plants were cultivated on tailings of Rosatom's Lovozero operations in Murmansk oblast, the only site in Russia where ore containing rare earth elements is mined, Rosatom said. But the most convincing results have been achieved with phosphogypsum substrate from industrial waste disposal sites across Russia, it added. From plants grown on phosphogypsum, its researchers extracted rare earth elements lanthanum, cerium, neodymium and samarium, as well as rare metals niobium and tantalum, achieving 65%-85% recovery rates, the company said.

Constraints

O'Connor said many phytomining announcements have surfaced over the years, but headlines have yet to translate into real-world production at scale. He also sees the technology as a promising area of research, but highlights limitations that phytoextraction developers have to overcome to make it economically useful as a complement to the established mine-to-magnet supply chain.

"Hyperaccumulator plants can absorb bioavailable rare earth ions from mine tailings, phosphogypsum and contaminated soils, but harvesting the plants is only the beginning," O'Connor said. "The resulting biomass still requires drying, incineration, leaching, impurity removal, solvent extraction, and separation into individual rare earth oxides."

The valuable output from the process is small due to constraints such as slow biological uptake, species-specific metal accumulation, land requirements, and the continued need for sophisticated downstream separation, of which China remains the primary center, said O'Connor. He added that studies suggest recoveries measured in tens to hundreds of kilograms of rare earths per hectare annually under favorable conditions — far below the scale required to materially alter global supply.

Despite having access to domestic sources of REE-bearing waste, Rosatom said the technology's primary potential lies in deployment abroad, at surface sources of rare-earth metals, and added that collaboration with foreign partners was ongoing, without specifying locations.

In the future, recovering value while remediating mine waste or disturbed ion-adsorption clay deposits in southern China, Southeast Asia, Brazil and similar tropical-weather environments could be the most likely application of phytomining, according to Rare Earth Exchanges.

Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, last assessed neodymium-praseodymium oxide — the core raw material for high-strength permanent magnets — at $112/kilogram FOB China July 31, up $2/kg from June 30.