ROTARY CLUB OF SASKATOON
November 19, 2020
ZOOM MEETING
There was one guest, our guest speaker, Dr. Jack Zhang.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
There is a webinar on November 19th at 6:30 pm where at least two members
need to attend for the Club to qualify for District Grants. We already have enough but more are welcome.
Mark has the details.
Co-Op and Sobey food cards are available. Several orders were placed during the meeting.
HAPPY AND SAD DOLLARS
Avis has $ 5.00 sad dollars because her computer crashed, and she will need to get it fixed.
Mark’s son is now fully qualified as a chiropractor. He has a web site and will be a guest speaker at one of our meetings in the new year.
Mark C. is proud of his daughter who earned a silver medal in a science fair. Her topic was noise levels in restaurants.
Steve is looking forward to a grandchild born to his daughter in December. Also, his son is getting married in December.
Wendy’s son is involved with a Hallmark Movie which will be shown on December 22nd. It is called ‘Meet Me at Christmas’.
Vic is happy about Bev being re-elected. He is paying $5.00 for himself and $5.00 on behalf of Bev.
Will is also happy for Bev to the tune of $5.00.
Graham donated $ 100.00 for Brenda Banbury’s walkathon for Polio Plus.
GUEST SPEAKER
Dr. JACK ZHANG was introduced by Gary Rusu. He deals with Rare Earth Elements and
must work closely with the Saskatchewan Research Council(SRC).
He has been involved for 20 years. His area is finding the rare earth elements and dealing with the tailings
and effluent when they are being processed.
The income of the department within SRC is $91 Million annually and there are 1500 Global clients.
The Periodic Table has 108 elements and 17 of them are rare earth elements.
You can find rare earth elements (REE) in any handful of dirt and sand. The trick is to find REE in a
high enough concentration to make it pay to mine it.
REE are valuable because they work in electronics particularly and allow for the mechanism they
are part of to be considerable smaller. For example, in an electric car the battery would be as big as
the whole car if not for REE.
You will find them in computers and cell phones as well. REE brings a much clearer screen on cell phones.
Small amounts of REE are enough for this.
In the early 1970s up to 1985 the US was the prime processor of REE. Now China processes, 60%,
the U.S. 10%, and all other countries together 30%.
In Canada right now no final processing is done. We want to change that. SRC has put up $4Million
toward the total cost of $31Million on a facility in the north end of Saskatoon. This would be the only
such facility in North America. It is already under construction and provides 50 jobs during construction.
When completed there will be 24 employees running the facility and there will be another 10 in R & D.
The function of the facility is to process raw material and through several steps separate the REE, which will
be commercial pure grade. By the end of 2022 it will be in full production.
Production will yield $25 Million per year in economic development.
The process will result in zero liquid discharge and none of the dry tailings will be released to the environment.
Part of the remains will be rich in phosphate and sold as fertilizer.
The two most valuable REE are Pr6011 and Nd203 because of their use in electronics.
- reported by Steve Wilson
