In the Monazite project, Técnicas Reunidas will develop an integrated hydrometallurgical process for the recovery of rare earth elements from monazitetype deposits in detrital phases. The reference deposit used for the research will be the Matamulas deposit, located in Campo de Montiel, in the province of Ciudad Real, and owned by the mining company Quantum Minería.

The development of a process of this nature will help strengthen the domestic supply of rare earth elements to European industries linked to hightechnology sectors, which are currently entirely dependent on imports from China. The lack of Western technologies for the production of rare earths from primary raw materials, together with the strong current and future demand for these metals, clearly highlights the strategic relevance of this development at the present time.

The Monazite project consists of the following phases:

• Phase 1:
  The first phase of the project involves the laboratory scale development of a hydrometallurgical process to treat the rare earth rich mineral concentrate obtained from the Matamulas deposit. The objective of this hydrometallurgical process is to obtain separated and highpurity rare earth elements with high efficiency.
• Phase 2:
  The second phase of the project will consist of demonstrating the technoeconomic feasibility of the developed process. To this end, a pilotscale hydrometallurgical plant will be operated with the objective of producing a pure product rich in Nd/Pr content, either in a combined form or individually, both configurations being commercially viable and attractive to the rare earth market.