Rare Earth Elements – your iPhone depends on it!
Just one of the REMs
So you’ve seen it in the headlines — the U.S. has uncovered an estimated $1 trillion worth of minerals in Afghanistan. Besides iron and copper (largest mineral deposits discovered), there are deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, lithium, gold, copper, and rare earth elements (REEs).1
If your chemistry is as rusty as mine, here’s a brief run-down on REEs:
They are a family of 17 chemically similar metallic elements, including lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, europium and yttrium, used in nearly every electronic device2 essential in building “green” technologies3 and necessary for military applications.4
That will satisfy some of you. For readers looking for a little more detail on this subject, continue reading as we provide a rare (pun intended) in-depth explanation of a dinner topic.
Common abbreviations used when referring to rare earth materials:
- RE = rare earth
- REM = rare earth metals
- REE = rare earth elements
- REO = rare earth oxides
- LREE = light rare earth elements (La-Sm)
- HREE = heavy rare earth elements (Eu-Lu)
While REEs are relatively abundant in the earth’s crust, finding deposits significant enough to mine is less common. China has been the dominant provider (~95% of world’s supply) of rare earth materials since the 1990s by cornering the market with the sheer scale of their production. The extraction and refinement of rare earth metals can cost anywhere between $500 million to $1 billion per mine and separation plantaccording to Jim Hedrick, a former USGS rare earth specialist.
Due to increasing global demand and diminishing supply, China has been lowering its export quotas for rare-earth metals by about 6% annually since 2000 and are expected to completely ban the exportation of REEs by 2015.
Although China is the dominant provider, it has only ~54% of the world’s rare earth deposits. The U.S., Canada, and Australia have large known RE deposits and mining developments are underway in those countries.
Companies of note:
Molycorp Minerals LLC – Possessing one of the largest, richest RE mines in the world (Mountain Pass, CA), it was closed back in the late ’90s but is projected to re-open in 2011.
Avalon Rare Metals- 100%-owned Nechalacho Deposit (Thor Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada), these deposits contain the more valuable ‘heavy’ rare earths.
Lynas Corporation Limited- A concentration plant is scheduled for completion by the end of this year in Mt Weld, Western Australia. A materials processing plant should start production in late 2011 in Kuantan, Malaysia.
Read on:
CBC.ca – Investors rush into rare earth element mining
Telegraph.co.uk – World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports
NaturalNews.com – Global supply of rare earth elements could be wiped out by 2012
MoneyTalks.net – An Impressive Rare Earth Discovery – in Canada
(image above taken from http://www.ctia.com.cn/TungstenNews/2009/14756.html)
- http://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/s/14062010/2/biz-finance-u-s-finds-mineral-riches-worth-1-trillion.html ↩
- Blackberries, iPods, computers, mobile devices, etc. ↩
- solar panels, wind turbines, nickel metal hydride batteries in hybrid cars, low-energy light bulbs ↩
- night vision and radar equipment, lasers, satellites, and missile guidance systems ↩
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