Wrote a long post in reply to your items 9 to 15... but accidentally erased it while trying to paste in a link that got clicked instead... so, will skip all that... and, short of time, so not going to reinvent all I'd said... but, the meat of the matter in external content re separations and Lerner's work is contained in his patent history, some early bit of which might also have been based on work done addressing Nemegosenda rocks...
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From those, or 4673491, 5824210, etc., you can easily enough search USPTO for other on topic patents by classification and by looking at the patents that reference these, or at others by those authors, etc., to get at the more current information in the more recent patents than those showing Lerner's early work. But, even in the patent work listed here, it appears it is work that was done later than the "Lerner Report" as the patent work tries to address some of its limits and its shortcomings...
The Lerner Report is still plenty useful for SRSR at the current stage, mostly as being specific to the rocks we have, it still proves plenty well enough that it's fully possible to mine Nemegosenda ores and produce niobium economically... even by using those early methods. The Report doesn't necessarily provide the optimal solution for today, or the lowest possible cost in processing solutions, for today, or even relative to Lerner's other work...
Lerner proceeds, in these early 1960's patents, to address other options mostly, as he says, as the use of organic chemistry is inherently more expensive than using basic inorganic chemistry in addressing the problems...
But, of course, then, I'll go back to my point... that the element of the cost in any one single step isn't the primary issue now... rather than it being about the total processing costs, versus the total product value that results... with higher total purity and lower specific impurity risks in the end products being worth more than the extra cost in getting there, particularly if you can do that directly as a part of your planned primary processing scheme, IF you can make that happen...
I think we're still a long way, now, from having to address the optimal solutions... but, when you get to the stage where you're doing feasibility studies... or working on proving and improving the options before proceeding to spend money on development... there will be a need for a more focused effort, to enable implementing "better" modern solutions. Basic physical separations tech has improved a lot since the 1950's... and physical is inherently cheaper and safer than chemical... so, some mix in optimization will have to happen... later...
The "how not to do it" example most current now... is at Orbite Aluminum... where the project has been delayed in development for two years while they burn money addressing shortcomings and disconnects in the process requirements and equipment... that should have been ironed out before beginning development, instead of it all having to be re-invented on the fly to replace installations that didn't work as expected...
And, of course... a history of error in drilling holes in the wrong places repeatedly... doesn't naturally lead to an assumption that there's not any technical risk inherent in having the same people implementing big money plans for development and installation of process technology that they know little about... Hiring better quality experts than before, helps... but doesn't solve the problem without some proofs that the same or similar issues won't somehow turn up, again... |
