Mount Ridley Mines Limited (ASX: MRD) has announced the lodging of a provisional patent application for its proprietary Selectro™ Process. Mount Ridley Mines Ltd is an Australian critical minerals explorer focused on the discovery and development of heavy rare earth elements, gallium, and scandium across its wholly-owned Mount Ridley and Weld Range projects in Western Australia. The patent application covers the company’s in-house leach technology, developed over more than a decade by Chief Technology Officer Chris Larder, with full intellectual property ownership retained by MRD’s subsidiary, Mount Ridley Tech Pty Ltd. This move secures a priority date and establishes a pathway for pursuing patent protection both in Australia and internationally.
The patent filing follows the company’s recently reported unoptimised metallurgical results for the Selectro™ Process, which demonstrated strong recoveries across a suite of critical minerals. Testwork showed recoveries of up to 83% for heavy rare earth elements (HREE), 80% for scandium, 72.5% for light rare earth elements (LREE), and 56% for gallium. These figures significantly outperformed the hydrochloric acid (HCl) baseline, which returned zero recovery for gallium under the same testwork conditions. The Selectro™ Process, which incorporates lower-cost reagents and enables reagent recycling through a closed-loop system, more than doubled the average recovery of MRD’s full critical mineral basket compared to the HCl baseline.
With the provisional application now lodged and initial testwork results confirming the process’s efficacy, Mount Ridley is positioned to advance commercialisation efforts. The company has initiated a bulk testwork program, which includes flotation and further optimisation of the Selectro™ Process, to inform its processing strategy and scoping study inputs. Discussions with prospective scoping study partners and third parties regarding testwork and potential collaboration opportunities are also set to progress. Mount Ridley Managing Director & CEO, Mr Allister Caird, commented, “Having patent protection in place is an important step in safeguarding the incredible potential of the Selectro™ Process. It ensures we preserve the multiple pathways to commercialisation this process unlocks.”
Beyond its performance, the Selectro™ Process also offers potential environmental advantages. Its closed-loop design minimises reagent discharge and reduces the volume of processing chemicals required compared to traditional hydrometallurgical approaches, presenting a lower environmental footprint. This characteristic is considered a significant advantage in the context of increasing environmental scrutiny of critical mineral processing globally.
