PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15746321
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-07
Patent Classification: ["423", "021100"]

Abstract:
The present invention relates to the recovery of rare earths, scandium, niobium, tantalum, zirconium, hafnium, titanium, and the like from ores or concentrates containing fluorine. More specifically, the ores or concentrates are pretreated by carbochlorination to convert the rare earths and other metals into their chlorides and then subjected to dilute hydrochloric acid leaching to recover the valuable rare earths and other metals from the leachate. Niobium, tantalum, zirconium, hafnium, and titanium can be recovered as their chlorides or oxychlorides from the gaseous products of carbochlorination, or converted into their oxides while simultaneously regenerating chlorine.

Claim (Index 14):
A method of recovering a mineral comprising at least one of scandium, niobium, tantalum, zirconium, hafnium, titanium, and a rare earth element from a fluorine-containing ore or concentrate, comprising:\n (a) agglomerating the fluorine-containing ore or concentrate with a carbon-containing material, a fluorine capturing agent, and a binder to produce an agglomerate; (b) carbochlorinating the agglomerate by exposing the agglomerate to chlorine gas to produce a calcine; (c) leaching the calcine by contacting the calcine with a dilute hydrochloric acid solution having a pH of less than about 4.0 to produce a mixture of a liquid and a solid; and (d) recovering the mineral by contacting the liquid of the mixture with at least one of sodium hydroxide, ammonium hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide, wherein a partial pressure or activity of the fluorine capturing agent substantially prevents formation of rare earth fluorides throughout step (a).

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 54.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.81967
- Patent Class: 423.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['13887027', '15503954', '12119964', '13858166', '12762503']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7687331826513382
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4873201193674877
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7405918763229532
- Mean Citation Score: 216.91604
- Max Citation Score: 228.30927000000003
- Similarity Product: 175.8971474847579

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 0
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test