Is The US Rare Earth Industry Now Catching Up With China?

Given that the group of minerals is considered of vital importance – both commercially and from a strategic standpoint – has the US rare earth industry now catching up with China?

By: Ringo Bones

Since The People’s Republic Of China stated that it plans to limit their rare earth metals export a little over a decade ago, the US government got spooked enough to call on the mining industry to address a potential rare earth shortage. Given that a single F-35 Lightning fighter jet uses about 35-pounds worth of rare earth metals only highlights the strategic importance of rare earths. A few years ago, a west Texas rare earth strike proved promising to make the US rare earth mining industry supersede China in a few years time.

Located only 35 miles north of the US-Mexican border, the west Texas rare earth d is a deposit is considered very promising because it is a type of rare earth mineral that is much easier to process from an economic standpoint compared to the minerals found in operational rare earth mines in China. At present, the most efficient economically viable way to extract rare earth metals from their relevant ores is via the continuous ion exchange / continuous ion chromatography process.

This process of extracting rare earths was initially developed by the Manhattan Project in the 1940s for refining actinide series elements – i.e. uranium, thorium, etc. – while only publicly admitting that the procedure was for refining rare earth elements as a proxy in developing the chemical process. This process was subsequently adapted to many high-volume industrial uses and came into its own with the advent of the continuous ion exchange / continuous ion chromatography process in conjunction with its cost effectiveness, simplicity and versatility.

Rare Earth Elements: Now A Pawn In The US- China Trade War?

Given President Trump’s ill advised tariffs on Chinese exports now sends the world’s economy on the precipice of recession, will China be using its rare earth metals industry as a pawn in the ongoing US-China trade war?

By: Ringo Bones

The ongoing US-China trade war – what is it really good for? Absolutely nothing says most economists, but as it rages on, will rare earth elements be drafted as reliable pawns in this ongoing trade war?

Believe it or not, there was a time where the United States and the Soviet Union were the leading producers and users of rare earth elements at the height of the Cold War. Given that rare earth elements are close homologues of elements used in the manufacture of atomic weapons, the Cold War era stockpiling of nuclear weapons means that the mining and production of weapons grade uranium has produce a quite useful byproduct – i.e. rare earth elements. Since the end of the Cold War, Beijing has been busy making atomic reactors for the much needed energy demands in modernizing its industry and over the years, Mainland China now produces 37-percent of the global supply of rare earth elements.

Rare earth elements are currently being used in the manufacture of a wide range of devices that includes smartphones, unmanned military drones. Neodymium, for example, is used to make those compact and powerful magnets found in smartphone speakers and haptic feedback devices, while terbium is used to make solid-state hard drives. It seems that modern life is very dependent on the low cost availability of rare earth elements.

Mainland China gained a monopoly on the production of rare earth elements because extracting them from the ground entails a lot of radioactive byproducts that were previously relegated to atomic weapons production at the height of the Cold War - which means that rare earth element mining is not so environmentally friendly. And given Beijing’s rather lax environmental laws, Mainland China is now second to none when it comes to the global rare earth metal industry.

2019 – International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements

Did you know that 150 years ago Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev discovered and established the Periodic System for the benefit for all mankind?

By: Ringo Bones

2019 became the official International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed it during its 74^th Plenary Meeting back in December 20, 2017. And based on the 202 EX/Decision 43, the 2019 International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements – also known as the IYPT 2019 – was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference at its 39^th Session (39 C/decision 60). Back in April 1, 2018, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) joined in the planning and coordination to make the IYPT 2019 to be “more visible” to everyone concerned. Well, the IUPAC succeeded in making the 2011 International Year of Chemistry more or less visible to everyone concerned back then.

1869 is considered as the year of the discovery of the Periodic System by the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev. The IYPT 2019 also commemorates the 150^th anniversary of the establishment of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The International Year aims to recognize the importance of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements as one of the most important and influential achievements in modern science reflecting the essence not only of chemistry, but also of physics, biology and other basic sciences disciplines. The IYPT 2019 is also an opportunity to reflect upon many aspects of the periodic table, including its history, the role of women in research, global trends and perspectives on science for sustainable development and the social and economic impacts of this field.  

Said to be inspired by the card game solitaire, Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements is based on the Russian chemist’s discovery that a natural order existed among the elements. Mendeleev arranged the chemical elements according to their atomic weight and then pointed out that elements side by side in adjacent columns – i.e. vanadium, niobium and tantalum – behaved in the same way chemically. Mendeleev’s newly discovered periodic table of chemical elements was so accurate that it allowed him to accurately predict the chemical properties of elements not yet discovered during his lifetime. By the way, Dmitri Mendeleev was born in 1834 in Siberia and passed away in 1934.

Rare Earth Seabed Mining: Renewable Energy Conundrum?

Given that they cost lass energy to refine than their counterparts found on land, should we be mining the seabed for rare earth metals? 

By: Ringo Bones 

The late eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes started an exploratory venture of deep sea seabed mining during the late 1960s and early 1970s but didn’t prove to be economically viable at the time because technology used for such an undertaking were still at its infancy. But given the advances of autonomous undersea craft in the 21^st Century, should we be exploring the viability of deep sea seabed mining because minerals used in renewable energy production like rare earth magnets used in wind turbines and tellurium used in advanced photovoltaic solar panels costs less energy to process and extract in comparison to their land-mined counterparts? 

Recently, British scientists exploring an underwater mountain in the Atlantic Ocean have discovered a treasure trove of rare earth minerals in a Tenerife undersea mountain known as the Tropic Seamount located more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) away from the Canary Islands. Samples brought back to the surface contain not only a high concentration of rare earth elements but also a scarce element called tellurium used in newfangled super-efficient photovoltaic solar panels at concentrations 50,000 times higher than in deposits found on land. Given that rare earth metals are used in powerful magnets that made low carbon energy generation a reality, should we be mining the seabed despite of the largely unknown ecological consequences? 

Dr. Bram Murton, the leader of the expedition, told the BBC that he had been expecting to find abundant minerals on the Tropic Seamount but not in such high concentrations. Dr. Murton calculated that the 2,670 metric tons of tellurium on this single seamount represents one-twelfth of the world’s total supply. And Dr. Murton has come up with a hypothetical estimate that if the entire deposit could be extracted and used to make solar panels, it could meet 65-percent of the UK’s electricity demand. One major concern is the effect of plumes of dust stirred up by the excavation of the ocean floor, spreading for long distances and smothering all life whenever it settles. To understand the implications, the expedition to Tropic Seamount conducted an experiment, the first of its kind, to mimic the effects of mining and to measure the resulting plume. The researchers hope that the environmental impact outweighs the resulting carbon dioxide reduction as we intensify the shift to more renewable energy generation.

Neodymium: The Music Producing Rare Earth?

Even though it had stayed a mere scientific curiosity decades after its discovery, but did you know that neodymium had become indispensable in the music producing world near the end of the 20^th Century?

By: Ringo Bones  

Ever since it was discovered by the famed Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach as part of the family of rare earth elements back in 1885, neodymium has stayed a mere scientific and laboratory curiosity decades after its discovery. Its name is a derivation of the Greek neos didymos or new twin. In pure form, neodymium has found use of producing the only bright purple glass known which was used in welder’s goggles before cheaper plastic alternatives were invented. In a cruder state, neodymium is used to take color out of glass and to make special kind of glass that transmits the tanning rays – as in ultraviolet-A spectrum – of the sun but not the unwanted infrared rays. 

Near the end of the 1970s, neodymium was found out to be an important component in ultra compact rare earth magnets that are more powerful than the alnico magnets that were then in use to make high-fidelity loudspeakers and microphones. The new much powerful neodymium magnets used in unbalanced dynamic microphones that are often used as a workhorse in live stage performance applications – like Peavey’s PVM 22 Diamond Mic – manages to generate a much stronger output signal than their alnico magnet equipped predecessors that it has resulted in the proliferation of low-cost dynamic microphones with quite high signal-to-noise ratios that can never be achieved using alnico magnets. 

Small but powerful neodymium magnets also made possible those “active” electric guitar pickups that became popular during the latter half of the Hair Metal revolution of the 1980s. Given that they produce more output signal than their alnico magnet predecessors, noise pickup issues in live onstage electric guitar playing has more or less been solved.

Samarium: The Audiophile Rare Earth?

Given that we common folk usually encounter it in our consumer electronic gear – especially hi-fi, does samarium represent the audiophile side of the rare earth elements? 

By: Ringo Bones 

More famously known in those ultra-small yet very powerful samarium-cobalt permanent magnets, the rare earth element samarium’s “global strategic importance” seems to be just way greater to be left to geopolitical tensions give that if Beijing blocks supplies destined to the rest of the planet, it would be us civilians – especially the audiophile community – that would be left high and dry. Given its importance in our modern way of life, it would only be proper to know a bit more about this largely obscure member of the rare earth kingdom. 

Discovered by Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1879 and further chemically refined to be identified to be a member of the rare earth family by Carl Auer von Welsbach back in 1885, the rare earth element samarium’s contribution to human civilization would not be fully realized until almost 90 years after its discovery. The primary source of the rare earth element samarium is the mineral samarskite – which is named after a 19^th Century Russian mining officer, Colonel V.E. Samarsky. 

During the American science boom of the 1960s, samarium was often experimented in laser applications. Calcium chloride crystals doped with samarium have been employed in laser devices for producing beams of light intense enough to burn metal or bounce off the moon. Its more widespread applications in the civilian consumer electronics market now includes those small but powerful samarium-cobalt magnets used in hi-fi headphone units and the small electric motors used in almost everything from disc drives in CD and DVD players and the memory drives and cooling fans in personal computers and laptops. Samarium-cobalt magnets are also extensively used in the actuators of unmanned drones. As a scientific curiosity, the isotope samarium-152 is the only alpha particle emitting radioactive element known to occur naturally among the elements lighter than bismuth. Samarium-152 has a half-life of 1-trillion years. 

Cerium: The Most Abundant Rare Earth Element?

Though considered “rare” in name only but does cerium qualify as the most abundant rare earth element?

By: Ringo Bones

It is considered rare in name only given that cerium occurs in the Earth’s crust at a concentration of 44 parts per million. On a percentage basis of abundance in the Earth’s crust – cerium is more plentiful than either tin or lead. And cerium is also found dissolved in seawater at a concentration of 1.8 tons per cubic mile of seawater. By comparison, the rare earth element thulium – the scarcest of the family on a percentage basis in the Earth’s crust – is only slightly rarer than iodine.

Chemical symbol Ce, atomic number 58 and named after the asteroid Ceres, cerium was discovered in 1803 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger of Sweden. It is the chief ingredient – at just under 50 percent – of misch-metal alloy often used in the manufacture of lighter flints. Cerium is used in alloys to make heat-resistant jet engine parts; its oxide has been used as a de rigueur petroleum cracking catalyst since the 1960sand as a volumetric oxidizing agent in most important industrial chemical processes.