Shortage of Rare Earth Elements Could Thwart Innovation

[Kadie]

Shortage of Rare Earth Elements Could Thwart Innovation

Jeremy Hsu
TechNewsDaily Contributor
livescience.com – Tue Feb 16, 7:16 am ET

Silicon may represent one of Earth's more common elements, but it transformed Silicon Valley into a high-tech corridor and helped usher the world into the Information Age.

Now rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum hold the key to hybrid cars, wind turbines and crystal-clear TV displays - that is, if a looming supply shortage doesn't stop innovation in its tracks.

Rare earth elements, called "rare earths" by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world's production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

"Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China's growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China's exports of rare earths," said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100216/sc_livescience/shortageofrareearthelementscouldthwartinnovation

[Tikki]

1. Off to Pandora, I say...

Tikki

[ddeclue]

2. BWA HA! Do you think that maybe that's why they call them RARE earth elements?

:rofl:

[Recursion]

7. Actually, it's not

It's an old chemical name having to do with the density of the minerals they are extracted from.

[cbdo2007]

3. Oh....I thought this was going to be about Mozarkite...

[farmout rightarm]

4. Tantalum isn't a RRE that I'm aware of...as for the real ones, there are likely

plenty deposits left around the world that haven't been found yet. The worst thing about them though is how polluting the process of mining and extracting them is...way worse even than most more common elements.

[backscatter712]

10. I've heard stories of tantalum wars in Africa.

Apparently, there are some decent-sized tantalum deposits in Africa, and mining there's resulted in the same sort of violent thuggery that happens around African diamond mines.

First blood-diamonds, now we've got blood-cell-phones and blood-laptops and blood-hybrids...

[Earth_First]

5. Bah! It's nothing the IMF/WB and a few natural resource wars cannot handle...

:sarcasm:

[kristopher]

6. Not this BS again...

Rare earth element
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanides.<1> Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earths since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.

The term "rare earth" arises from the rare earth minerals from which they were first isolated, which were uncommon oxide-type minerals (earths) found in Gadolinite extracted from one mine in the village of Ytterby, Sweden. However, with the exception of the highly-unstable promethium, rare earth elements are found in relatively high concentrations in the earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust at 68 parts per million.

...The principal sources of rare earth elements are the minerals bastnäsite, monazite, and loparite and the lateritic ion-adsorption clays. Despite their high relative abundance, rare earth minerals are more difficult to mine and extract than equivalent sources of transition metals (due in part to their similar chemical properties), making the rare earth elements relatively expensive. Their industrial use was very limited until efficient separation techniques were developed, such as ion exchange, fractional crystallization and liquid-liquid extraction during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

[JDPriestly]

8. It's a matter of investment. If we invested in developing our resources, we could compete.

Deposits of rare earth elements exist in the United States, Canada and other countries. But only China's government supports the mining and refining industries capable of processing the resources from start to finish.
. . . .
Europium: This extremely rare but critical chemical makes the red color for television monitors and energy-efficient LED light bulbs. China is the only country today that produces europium, dysprosium and terbium, which are necessary for either boosting the efficient operating temperature of magnets or for producing red in color displays. In December, USGS scientists discovered Alaskan deposits of europium, but even the few U.S. companies that mine rare earth elements must send the resources to China for processing.
Lanthanum: A primary component of the nickel-metal hydride battery in Toyota's popular hybrid car, Prius. The Prius also incorporates neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Lifton estimates that Toyota may use as much as 7,500 tons of lanthanum and 1,000 tons of neodymium per year to build its Prius cars. That dependence on rare earth elements has prompted the company to search for alternative sources outside China.

Neodymium: This represents a main component of the permanent magnets at the heart of the most efficient wind turbines. China's own wind production efforts could consume all the available neodymium production and leave nothing for the rest of the world's booming wind industry, Lifton notes in a recent report titled "The Rare Earth Crisis of 2009." Neodymium is also used in the glass of incandescent light bulbs produced by General Electric, which has unsurprisingly invested in both Chinese and alternative sources of rare earth elements.

. . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100216/sc_livescience/shortageofrareearthelementscouldthwartinnovation

Yes, the mining may be very bad for the environment. But then so are the extraction and use of petroleum. And going the nuclear route could just finish off the human race. Our choices aren't that great. We need to think about choosing the best from the worst at this point.

[kristopher]

9. That is precisely the lesson...

The term "rare" has given the fossil/fuel nuclear disinformation machine a fulcrum on which to leverage a gullible public's belief that renewable energy can't serve our needs.

The actual situation is that demand has been stagnant at a low level that resulted in industry consolidation at the place of lowest cost production. Increased demand leads to increased investment in marginally more expensive mining and refining operations.

Common sense is a lot more rare than the elements in question.

[JDPriestly]

17. Thanks, kristopher. I agree with you.l

[Subdivisions]

13. 'Our choices aren't that great.'

Eventually resource depletion, especially energy, will end this civilization. As such, we have two ultimate choices: re-localization of economies and self sustainability.

[Stevenmarc]

11. .

[Dreamer Tatum]

12. Translation: We Can't Rely on China to Fuck Up Its Ecosystem Forever

at some point we'll have to destroy our own looking for gooberinium and loogiebdynium.

[sketchy]

14. Headline from 12-09 - Valuable rare-earth elements extracted from waste stream

Link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=222254&mesg_id=222254

snip:
Fierce competition over raw materials for new green technologies could
become a thing of the past, thanks to a discovery by scientists from the
University of Leeds.

Researchers from Leeds' Faculty of Engineering have discovered how to
recover significant quantities of rare-earth oxides, present in titanium
dioxide minerals. The rare-earth oxides, which are indispensable for the
manufacture of wind turbines, energy-efficient lighting, and hybrid and
electric cars, are extracted or reclaimed simply and cheaply from the
waste materials of another industrial process.

If taken to industrial scale, the new process could eventually shift the balance of power in global supply, breaking China's near monopoly on these scarce but crucial resources. China currently holds 95 per cent of the
world's reserves of rare earth metals in a multi-billion dollar global market in which demand is growing steadily.

"These materials are also widely used in the engines of cars and electronics, defence and nuclear industries(1). In fact they cut across so many leading edge technologies, the additional demand for device related applications is set to outstrip supply," said Professor Animesh Jha, who led the research at Leeds.

"There is a serious risk that technologies that can make a major environmental impact could be held back through lack of the necessary raw materials - but hopefully our new process, which is itself much 'greener' than current techniques, could make this less likely."

[farmout rightarm]

15. That's good because TiO2 is plentiful. And cheap.

Hundreds of tons of it get thrown away into the sewer every year...it's used to polish eyeglass lenses.

[L0oniX]

16. Yes folks. Resources are finite and some will reach the end sooner than others. No surprise here.

[MilesColtrane]

18. Get Ready for the U.S. to ramp up the pressure on China.