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    Rio Tinto gallium pilot in Quebec: process and residue value notes for engineers

    March 3, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    First reported on International Mining – News

    30 Second Briefing

    Rio Tinto is proceeding with construction of a pilot plant in Quebec to extract primary gallium from its alumina refining process, backed by a conditionally approved contribution from Natural Resources Canada under the Global Partnerships Initiative. The project, developed with Indium Corporation, follows successful first gallium extraction in May 2025 using process streams from Rio Tinto’s alumina refineries. If scaled, the technology could turn refinery residue and intermediate liquors into a new critical metal stream without major changes to existing Bayer process infrastructure.

    Technical Brief

    • Pilot-scale operation is intended to validate continuous extraction performance and gallium recovery efficiency under refinery operating conditions.
    • Successful piloting would allow retrofitting of similar extraction circuits across Rio Tinto’s wider alumina refinery network.
    • By valorising refinery residues, the flowsheet aims to reduce waste tonnages requiring storage or long-term management.
    • Outcomes will inform whether gallium can be treated as a routine by-product stream in alumina refinery design and debottlenecking studies.

    Our Take

    In our database, gallium appears only in a small subset of the 1109 Mining stories, signalling that Rio Tinto’s Canada‑based gallium work is still at the niche end of critical‑minerals coverage compared with mainstream battery metals.

    The related March 2026 item on Rio Tinto’s conditional C$18.95 million support from Natural Resources Canada’s Global Partnerships Initiative suggests this Quebec gallium pilot is being positioned as a strategic by‑product stream from alumina and bauxite operations rather than a standalone mine development.

    With Indium Corporation linked in the related coverage alongside gallium and alumina, this pilot in Quebec could give Rio Tinto an early foothold in supplying semiconductor‑grade minor metals from existing alumina infrastructure, a route other aluminium producers in our coverage have not yet publicly pursued in North America.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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