About Rare Earth Elements.
REE’s (Rare Earth Elements) are attracting great interest and have left many people scrambling to find out why. Here’s a brief summary highlighting the what, where and why.
What are they…
A collection of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanides’.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element - cite_note-0 Most commonly used for high tech applications, their incorporation enabling and making possible a vast range of applications and products we take for granted every day. Importantly they cannot generally be replaced by an alternative, making them virtually essential to our technological world as we know it.
A few notable higher profile applications include neodymium permanent magnets, used in powerful compact motors for electric cars and hybrids, along with wind turbines. High efficiency light bulbs, gasoline processing, MRI machines in hospitals, TV and computer screens for the color reproduction, solar panels made more efficient, magnetic applications from mp3 player ear buds to hard disk drives.
Technological progress and environmentally sustainable development depends on REE’s.
Where are they…
Widely dispersed in the Earth’s crust. However, REE deposits of high concentration are relatively rare, those that give the best yield and economic return. Historically REE’s were sourced from placer sand deposits in India and Brazil, then Africa and now China produces over 97% of the worlds REE needs, and consumes around 60%.
New project sites include Canada, the US and Australia, showing economic high yield potential. A number of projects are nearing production in those areas, highlighting the great potential of those zones.
Why are they getting so much attention…
It’s a result of REE’s indispensability and maintaining supply, based on China’s September 1st 2009 announcement to progressively reduce its export quota to 35,000 tons per year in 2010-2015.
Today great efforts are being directed toward finding new sources. Not only to enable a release from Chinas monopoly on REE, but help localize over US$1 Billion value of REE products consumed in the US (USGS estimate).
Further reading; the USGS notes..
High-technology and environmental applications of the rare earth elements (REE) have grown dramatically in diversity and importance over the past four decades. As many of these applications are highly specific, in that substitutes for the REE are inferior or unknown, the REE have acquired a level of technological significance much greater than expected from their relative obscurity. Although actually more abundant than many familiar industrial metals, the REE have much less tendency to become concentrated in exploitable ore deposits. Consequently, most of the world’s supply comes from only a few sources. The United States once was largely self-sufficient in REE, but in the past decade has become dependent upon imports from China.
The diverse nuclear, metallurgical, chemical, catalytic, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties of the REE have led to an ever increasing variety of applications. These uses range from mundane (lighter flints, glass polishing) to high-tech (phosphors, lasers, magnets, batteries, magnetic refrigeration) to futuristic (high-temperature superconductivity, safe storage and transport of hydrogen for a post-hydrocarbon economy).
The rare earth elements are essential for a diverse and expanding array of high-technology applications, which constitute an important part of the industrial economy of the United States. Long-term shortage or unavailability of REE would force significant changes in many technological aspects of American society. Domestic REE sources, known and potential, may therefore become an increasingly important issue for scientists and policymakers in both the public and private sectors.