Five SoS RARE researchers present at the Critical Materials Workshop, London

SoS RARE researchers from Camborne School of Mines (CSM), the British Geological Survey (BGS) and University of Brighton presented at the Critical Materials Workshop in London on the 17th of June 2015. This was a one-day themed conference bringing together mineralogists, geologists, industry representatives and other professionals working towards the security, exploitation and diversification of the supply of critical raw materials. The day included an opportunity to hear from representatives from all the SoS Minerals consortia (CoG3, TeaSe, MarineE-tech, and SoS RARE). The timetable was quite strongly skewed towards the formation of REE deposits and mechanisms to enrich the HREE, and REE-related talks were 'live tweeted' by the SoSRare twitter account (@SoSRARE).

REE-deposit related talks ranged from those on conventional, hard-rock, deposits (predominantly the focus of WP1); through to less conventional ion-adsorption deposits (the focus of WP2). Frances Wall (CSM) provided the first SoS RARE talk, consisting of an overview of the project, detailing the objectives of the project and the details of some forthcoming workshops. Martin Smith (Brighton), Sam Broom-Fendley (CSM) and Ed Loye (CSM) summarised work at the Huanglongpu, Tundulu and Lofdal carbonatites (China, Malawi and Namibia), where textural relationships and geochemical data all suggest mechanisms for HREE fractionation. Kathryn Goodenough (BGS) summarised work funded by the EU under the EURARE project, assessing the major REE deposits of Europe. Other interesting talks included the importance of fenite as a case study for REE mobility (E Dowman; Kingston), and two talks on the Serra Dourada granite in Brazil, which is under exploration as an ion-adsorption deposit (I Vasconcelos Santana, CSM; C Pinto-Ward, Imperial). A number of posters also advertised REE research.

The conference was organised and run by the Applied Mineralogy Group, a special interest group of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and was hosted at the Natural History Museum in London.

Sam Broom-Fendley 18 June 2015