Rare Earth Metals and uses

[muppet]

For those of you who don't know what rare earth metals are
Here is a list of the 17 REEs and their uses;
Scandium
Aluminum alloy: aerospace
Yttrium
Phosphors, ceramics, lasers
Lanthanum
Re-chargeable batteries
Cerium
Batteries, catalysts, glass polishing
Praseodymium
Magnets, glass colorant
Neodymium
Magnets, lasers, glass
Promethium
Nuclear batteries
Samarium
Magnets, lasers, lighting
Europium
TV color phosphors: red
Gadolinium
Superconductors, magnets
Terbium
Phosphors: green, fluorescent lights
Dysprosium
Magnets, lasers
Holmium
Lasers
Erbium
Lasers, vanadium steel
Thulium
X-ray source, ceramics
Yterrbium
Infrared lasers, high reactive glass
Lutetium
Catalyst, PET scanners

Do we have rare earth metals in New Zealand?

[muppet]

China Rare Earths Leave Toxic Trail to Toyota Prius, Vestas Wind Turbines

By Stuart Biggs - Jan 5, 2011
Rare earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy -- from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear.
China’s rare earth industry each year produces more than five times the amount of waste gas, including deadly fluorine and sulfur dioxide, than the total flared annually by all miners and oil refiners in the U.S. Alongside that 13 billion cubic meters of gas is 25 million tons of wastewater laced with cancer-causing heavy metals such as cadmium, Xu Xu, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters, said at a Beijing conference on Dec. 28.
“China supplied the world with very cheap and good-quality rare earths for more than a decade at the cost of depleting its resources and damaging its environment,” Wang Caifeng, who heads the government-affiliated China Association for Rare Earths, said at the conference. “The world should thank China.”
With China now shutting down unregulated rare earth mines and slashing exports, users from Toyota Motor Corp. to Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines, are concerned that supplies may be constrained. China provides more than 95 percent of global shipments of the 17 rare earth metals, also used in mobile phones, catalysts to reduce automobile exhaust emissions and energy-saving electronics.
The government cut export quotas for the first half of 2011 by 35 percent last month. That follows a 72 percent reduction in the second half of 2010, causing the price of some of the metals to more than double.
Lynas, Molycorp Leap
Mining companies including Lynas Corp. from Australia and Molycorp Inc. in the U.S. plan to make up the supply shortfall. Molycorp said Nov. 1 it restarted processing at a mine in Mountain Pass, California, that closed in 2002.
That mine had its own environmental problems, resulting in Molycorp, then a unit of Unocal Corp., paying $1.6 million to settle with state agencies after toxic wastewater leaks in the 1990s.
With rare earths in short supply, Molycorp shares more than tripled last year on the New York Stock Exchange. Lynas also more than tripled on the Australia Securities Exchange in 2010.
Vestas uses the rare earth neodymium in magnets for its V112 wind turbine, which enters production next year, Michael Holm, a spokesman, said in a telephone interview.
Toxic Leakage
Rare earth metals aren’t rare. Cerium used in batteries and to cut auto emissions, is more common than copper in the earth’s crust, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook. The metals got the name because they are difficult to extract, unlike concentrated deposits of copper or gold ore.
The Baotou region in Inner Mongolia produces about half of China’s annual output of 120,000 tons of rare earths, with Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. being the country’s biggest producer.
A four-story tailing dam containing radioactive waste 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Baotou has been “a serious problem” and polluted rivers, Chen Zhanheng, director of the academic department of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, said in an interview.
Baotou Steel Group, which operates the Baiyun Ebo mine, has spent 500 million yuan ($75 million) with the local government to relocate five villages after seepage from the dam polluted agricultural land and drinking water, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported on Nov. 7.
Uranium Disposal
“All rare earth ores contain uranium and thorium, which could pose a danger if not disposed of responsibly,” said Dudley J Kingsnorth, who managed Australia’s Mount Weld rare earths project for Ashton Mining of Canada Inc. for 10 years. He’s now an independent consultant on the metals.
Rare earths require more chemicals to separate than base metals such as copper, zinc and lead, said Bernd Lottermoser, a professor of environmental earth sciences at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.
China toughened regulations in 2009 and set production quotas to bolster prices. Subsequent export restrictions combined with rising demand have caused the price of neodymium, used in Toyota’s Prius hybrid car, to surge four-fold to $80 a kilogram from $19.12 in 2009, according to Lynas.
The world excluding China will require 55,000 to 60,000 tons of rare-earth metals this year, of which as much as 24,000 tons will come from China, Molycorp’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Smith said in a Jan. 3 interview on Bloomberg Radio. The company may double its planned production to 40,000 tons in 2012 to help meet global demand, he said.
Sydney-based Lynas is building a A$550 million ($550 million) rare earths project at Mount Weld, Western Australia.
Devil You Know
Molycorp’s mine won a San Bernardino County permit in 2004 to operate for 30 years and passed another inspection in 2007.
Processing improvements at that California mine will almost cut in half the amount of raw ore needed to produce the same amount of rare earth oxides, Molycorp’s Smith said during testimony to the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee in March. Water recycling and treatment processes will reduce the mine’s fresh water usage by 96 percent, he said.
“This is one that could be reopened with strong regulatory and environmental oversight,” Glenn Miller, professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Nevada-Reno, said in a phone interview.
“A lot of these metals are used for environmental purposes that are really important,” Miller said. “It’s far better to reopen this mine, where you have a known geological deposit, than go into a new country.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-01-05/china-rare-earths-leave-toxic-trail-to-toyota-prius-vestas-wind-turbines.html

[eri]

lots of countries have rare earths

the problem as stated is extracting them cheaply and safely enough from thousands of tons of rock and soil

which is why places like south america and china, with their cheap labour and poor environmental laws can do it economically

chinese companies are already buying/bribing their way into africa for when their own laws catch up with them

[Quenby]

For those of you who don't know what rare earth metals are
Here is a list of the 17 REEs and their uses;
Scandium
Aluminum alloy: aerospace
Yttrium
Phosphors, ceramics, lasers
Lanthanum
Re-chargeable batteries
Cerium
Batteries, catalysts, glass polishing
Praseodymium
Magnets, glass colorant
Neodymium
Magnets, lasers, glass
Promethium
Nuclear batteries
Samarium
Magnets, lasers, lighting
Europium
TV color phosphors: red
Gadolinium
Superconductors, magnets
Terbium
Phosphors: green, fluorescent lights
Dysprosium
Magnets, lasers
Holmium
Lasers
Erbium
Lasers, vanadium steel
Thulium
X-ray source, ceramics
Yterrbium
Infrared lasers, high reactive glass
Lutetium
Catalyst, PET scanners

Do we have rare earth metals in New Zealand?

I have a question to ask , are the rarest metals most expensive too ?
just curious to know .

[eri]

only if they have use

gold and silver have always been useful

lithium wasn't of much use to anyone until the recent discovery that batteries made with it were far superior to lead acid batteries etc. now there is a big hunt for economical sources of it

platinum looked too much like silver to very sought after for jewellery but really took off when they discovered it could help clean up car emissions in catalytic converters

same with palladium which as well as catalytic converters can be used to replace gold as a tooth capping material

prices of both will probably drop if electric cars mean catalytic converters are no longer needed

if any of the more unknown elements above are discovered to be critical to the forming of modern "holy grail" stuff like carbon nano-tubes or cold fusion reactors their prices would go through the roof

nz probably has most of them in sea water, but how to get it out commercially?

prices can quickly crash down again if technology finds cheaper replacements for them

kaikoura deep sea sponges produce a chemical that fights cancers in new ways, so they went from having no value to having high value very quickly...but then they were able to synthesise these chemicals industrially so value of the sponges dropped back to zip again

countries have to play these cards when they have them

the west coast has very clean high grade coal that pike river was trying to extract for sale to indian? steel mills

but if a way is found to make high grade steel without coal or with dirty ozzie coal, then the west coast coal will become uneconomic again

[muppet]

Russia Governor Says Sumitomo, Mitsui Discuss Rare Earths Amid China Curbs

By Ilya Arkhipov - Feb 12, 2011 8:20 AM GMT+1300 Fri Feb 11 19:20:41 GMT 2011
Mitsui & Co. and Sumitomo Corp. are interested in Siberian rare-earth deposits that weren’t expected to be mined until 2030 as Russia tries to fill the gap left when China slashed exports, Yakutia Governor Yegor Borisov said.
Tokyo-based Mitsui and Sumitomo, Japan’s second- and third- biggest trading companies, have held talks with regional officials about niobium and scandium resources in Yakutia, an area of northeastern Russia the size of India, Borisov said yesterday in an interview.
Prices for rare earths, a group of elements used in products ranging from electric cars and laptops to guided missiles and satellites, have soared since July, when China cut second-half export quotas by more than 70 percent. China accounted for 97 percent of rare-earth output in 2009 and more than half of consumption, U.S. government data show.
South Korea and Japan have begun to go hungry,” Borisov said in the Ural Mountains city of Ufa, where he attended a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev. “Now there’s good reason to reconsider our position on rare-earth deposits in Yakutia that were scheduled for development after 2030.”
Mitsui and Sumitomo officials in Moscow and Tokyo declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg. They declined to be identified, citing company policies.
Russia has the largest reserves of rare-earth minerals after China, though production is minimal, according to U.S. government data. The world holds about 99 million metric tons of commercially viable rare earths, with China and Russia accounting for 36 percent and 19 percent, respectively, the Interior Department said in a report last year.
‘Strategic Deposits’

“Our counteragents are taking a broad look at this and aren’t counting on something today,” Borisov said. “They know that we won’t let them have direct access to strategic deposits.’
Japan, the world’s largest consumer of rare earths, has sought alternative suppliers. Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Moscow yesterday amid renewed tensions in a 65-year dispute over four islands off the northern tip of Japan.
Yakutia, which has fewer than 1 million people, probably holds “many more” rare-earth deposits than most analysts estimate, Borisov said, declining to be more specific.
Yakutia’s Tontorskoye deposit, which primarily contains niobium, is “many times bigger in volume and quality than Brazil’s famous deposits,” Borisov said.
Outstripping Demand

Brazil is home to the world’s largest deposit of the mineral, used in alloys such as stainless steel for oil and gas pipelines. The Brazilian deposit has enough niobium to meet current world demand for 500 years, according to the Brussels- based Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center.
Global consumption of rare earths last year was about 124,000 tons, 10,000 tons less than production, a difference covered by stockpiles, the U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a Sept. 30 report. Demand will probably reach 180,000 tons next year.
China’s commerce ministry said Jan. 18 that it and other agencies were still considering the full-year export quota. The ministry set the first-half quota at 14,446 tons, a 35 percent decline from the same period last year.
With China continuing to restrict exports, Borisov said he’s in talks with the Federal Subsoil Agency in Moscow about starting auctions for deposits as early as 2014. The agency’s press service declined to comment.
“We’re reconsidering our position,” Borisov said. “We’re trying to determine how much we have now. We’re in the early stages.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-11/sumitomo-mitsui-hold-rare-earth-talks-with-russia-as-china-limits-supply.html