Considered a critical mineral by countries including the United States, Canada and Australia, scandium is a rare, versatile and useful metal.
Scandium is the most effective known microalloying element that can strengthen aluminium, while also offering improved flexibility, resistance to heat and corrosion, and lighter weight.
For this reason, military and civilian aircraft have used aluminium-scandium alloys for decades to improve fuel economy, manoeuvrability and range. These alloys are used in the aerospace, energy (for solid oxide fuel cells), automotive, and 3D printing industries.
They’re also used in sporting equipment, such as baseball bats, lacrosse sticks and bicycle frames, because of their lightweight properties – bicycle manufacturers estimate that scandium reduces the weight of their aluminium frames by up to 15%.
Scandium is also used in electronic ceramics, lasers, LED lighting, glass and many more applications where its unique properties make it a valuable addition.
Extracting a critical mineral from waste
Although it’s available all over the world, scandium is usually only found naturally in very small amounts, and is usually mixed up with other minerals and metals. So it can be hard to find, extract and process.
We’ve developed a new way to sustainably extract and produce high-purity scandium oxide from the waste streams of titanium dioxide production, without the need for any additional mining.
Element North 21
In May 2022, we produced the first batch of high-purity scandium oxide at our commercial-scale demonstration plant at Sorel-Tracy in Canada, making us the first North American producer of this critical mineral.
Through Element North 21 – our scandium production division – and with the addition of a second module that will start producing scandium oxide in 2024, we will increase our annual production capacity to 12 tonnes per year.
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