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Indian Rare Earths is a Government of India Enterprise comming under the administrative control of Departnment of Atomic Energy. The Company is engaged in the business of mining and processing of beach sand minerals.India's estimated reserve is as high as 278 million tons (highest in the world), along with 13 million tons of rutile, 18 million tons of zircon, 7 million tons of monazite, 86 million tons of garnet and 84 million tons of sillimanite (Table-1).These resources occur as beach washing deposits between the high and low tide lines along the beach and also as inland extension of placer sands

History

The discovery process for this huge Indian deposit was accidentally initiated in the year 1908 when Herr Schomberg, a German chemist identified the presence of monazite in the sand remnants of contaminants of coir imported from Kerala. Encouraged by the great demand in those days for thorium oxide in gas mantle, Schomberg established the first plant at Manavalakurichi (MK) in 1910 for separation of monazite and later another plant at Chavara. Subsequent to the arrest of Schomberg on charges of being a German spy during the first world war, both his plants at Manavalakurichi and Chavara were closed down. The London Cosmopolitan Mineral Company established in the year 1914 in London took over these plants and continued operations. In 1920, Hopkins and Williams (H & W), yet another London based English Company started operation at MK and Chavara. The first export of ilmenite from Chavara took place in the year 1922 and the Indian ilmenite maintained a virtual monopoly in the world market as basic raw material for titania pigment (white) till 1940 when four plants belonging to Travancore Minerals Ltd (TMC), Hopkins & William Travancore Ltd (H&W) and Fx Pereira & Sons (FXP) together exported as high as three hundred thousand tons of ilmenite from Chavara.

When India got its independence in 1947 , Govt. of India realised the strategic importance of the mineral and placed an embargo on its export. Around this time, to be precise on August 18, 1950, Indian Rare Earths Ltd.(IREL) was incorporated as a private limited Company under the Indian Companies Act, 1913, jointly owned by the Government of India and the then Government of Travancore-Cochin. Out of the four plants, those of TMC and H&W were closed down between 1960 and 1963. The only unit that remained functional was FXP, owned by Kerala Government. The unit was later amalgamated with the Kerala Minerals & Metals Ltd. (KMML). Meanwhile in 1963, shares of the State of Travancore-Cochin were handed over to the Govt. of India and IREL became a full fledged Central Government Undertaking under DAE to initiate its mining and mineral separation activities.

Events

The immediate objective of the new company was to set up a chemical plant for processing of monazite for the recovery of thorium and uranium values in the form of concentrate and separate all the rare earths as mixed Rare Earths (RE) chloride. Accordingly in 1952, IREL set up a Rare Earth Plant at Alwaye, Cochin with an initial capacity of processing 1500 tpa of monazite based on the technology provided by the Societe des Products Chemiques des Terres Rares (now Rhodia Inc). The Company was also entrusted with the responsibility for setting up a Thorium Plant at Trombay to convert a part of the thorium concentrate to pure thorium nitrate for its application in the area of gas mantle making. From 1955 to 1998, IREL operated this plant on behalf of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and supplied thorium nitrate to gas mantle industries and nuclear grade thorium oxide for research and development work related to utilisation of thorium in the Indian nuclear energy programme.

Units of IREL

The Chavara plant (Q grade) is based on the mineral deposit of 23 km. long stretch of land in the belt of Neendakara and Kayamkulam which is well known as the richest and the single largest ilmenite deposit in the country.

The Manavalakurichi plant (MK grade), situated 25 km north of Kanyakumari, exploits minerals from 8 km. stretch between Kadiapatnam and Colachel in the Midlam area.

Orissa Sands Complex (OSCOM) exploit the large beach sand deposits of Orissa Sea Coasts. The Complex was put into operation from 1986 onwards. Since the ilmenite was lower in grade with respect to its TiO2 content, OSCOM was also incorporated with two chemical units namely Synthetic Rutile Plant (SRP) and Acid Regeneration Plant (ARP) to convert the entire amount of ilmenite to 100,000 tons of 92% grade synthetic rutile based on the Benelite cyclic process.

Value Addition plants include HERO (Heavy Rare Earth Oxide) and PRYNCE (Praseodymium, Yttrium , Neodymium and Cerium) which fractionate the composite rare earth chloride into light, medium and heavy rare earth bearing salts as well as produce pure salts of Nd, Pr and La & MOPP

IREL by late nineties have successfully emerged as a reliable producer and supplier of heavy minerals and rare earth chemicals in the national and international market.

See also

Official Website[[1]]