Orbite receives notice of allowance for first red mud monetization patent

Orbite Aluminae Inc. is pleased to announce that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office has issued a notice of allowance for patent application No. 2,857,574, pertaining to Processes for Treating Red Mud. Orbite has paid the requisite fees and expects patent issuance within CIPO's usual timeframe of 9 to 12 weeks.

Red mud is the waste product generated by the Bayer process, the industrial process used for refining bauxite to obtain alumina, the raw material for the electrolytic production of aluminium. A typical bauxite refinery generates one to two times as much red mud as it does alumina. That waste is typically stockpiled in open-air tailings ponds, although in some cases it has been disposed of in the ocean. Red mud represents a long-term environmental liability for the entire alumina industry. The Orbite process is able to utilize red mud as a feedstock, extracting all of the valuable constituents, including rare earths and rare metals, alumina, magnesium oxide and titanium dioxide, while only returning a small fraction of inert material. In this way, the Orbite process not only contributes to the remediation of an environmental problem, but turns a liability into an asset.

Furthermore, the Company has recently received notification that CIPO has granted and issued Canadian patent 2,812,309 titled Process for Extracting Aluminum from Aluminous Ores. This patent, and the one related to Red Mud, once granted, will give Orbite exclusivity for the use of these inventions for a period of twenty (20) years following their respective filing date.

"The uniqueness of the Orbite Process is clearly validated by our growing portfolio of intellectual property rights," stated Glenn Kelly, CEO of Orbite. "Consequently, we are well positioned to advance our efforts to commercialize this breakthrough technology, and help convert continuously growing stockpiles of environmental liabilities into valuable assets."