'I think most people do not have any idea of the range and scale of metals and minerals that are used to make electronics,' says Richard. 'We've found use for them in computers, cars and all kinds of machinery - it's technology that we didn't have 15 or 20 years ago that we now take for granted.
What is copper used for? Copper is a vital element used to produce wiring for all kinds of electronics. It conducts electricity and heat very efficiently, and it is needed in larger amounts than any other metal for mobile phone componentry. There will have to be an increase in its supply to meet the world's growing demand for electronics.
rare earth minerals used in mobile phones
'Rather than creating things like mobile phones, using them for a while and putting them in a drawer when we buy a new one, we have an obligation not to lose track of where those precious materials are, and to ensure we are making products in forms that can be readily recycled,' Richard says.
Neodymium, europium, terbium and other rare earth metals that were once barely heard of are now commonplace in phone touchscreens, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and other modern technologies due to their useful magnetic and electronic properties. Mining them is expensive and inefficient, since large areas of land must be dug up to extract small amounts.
This rapid heating breaks open microscopic glass spheres in the ash that contain rare earth metals. It also converts the metals from phosphate to oxide forms that are easier to separate out using mild acids.
The distance between these antenna systems is usually small making it extremely difficult to achieve flawless performance. Capacitors made of the rare, hard, blue-gray metal tantalum are used for filtering and frequency tuning.
Alloys containing rare earths neodymium, praseodymium and gadolinium are used in the magnets contained in the speaker and microphone. Neodymium, terbium and dysprosium are also used in the vibration unit.
Extracting rare earth elements in China is known to have an enormous environmental impact, while cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been highlighted as a major human rights concern.
"Neodymium is responsible for most, if not all, of the growth in rare earth demand at the moment," said Roderick Eggert, deputy director of the Critical Materials Institute at Colorado School of Mines.
But demand for the rare earth metal is outstripping supply by about 3,000 tons per year, said Julie Klinger, the author of "Rare Earth Frontiers." Today, that supply is coming from China. More than 80 percent of the world's neodymium is produced there. In 2017 alone, China mined 105,000 metric tons of rare earth metals, while the U.S. has only produced about 43,000 metric tons in the last 20 years combined.
"The United States used to be the most important single producing country for rare earths, from a single mine called the Mountain Pass mine in southern California near the border with Nevada," said Eggert. "In the 1960s and 70s, this mine was the dominant rare earth mine in the world. But as Chinese mines were developed in the 1980s and 90s, they gradually drove the Mountain Pass mine out of business."
Around the same time that was happening, China was investing deeply in its own rare earth metal mining and production and succeeded. From the late 1990s to 2010, China became the dominant player and it now controls the majority of the market, said Kanko.
Earlier this year, rare earths narrowly avoided being included on a new list of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. In the original $200 billion proposed tranche of Chinese tariffs, neodymium and other rare earths were on that list.
These elements are so important, that the U.S. is going to start producing rare earths again. Mountain Pass mine was recently bought out of bankruptcy by two U.S. investment firms called MP Materials. The company says that it wants to "rebuild a rare earth industry in America."
Smartphones are pocket-sized vaults of precious metals and rare earths. A typical iPhone is estimated to house around 0.034g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and less than one-thousandth of a gram of platinum. It also contains the less valuable but still significant aluminium (25g) and copper (around 15g).
Her approach is very hands-off, minimising the need for human contact with the more dangerous materials inside smartphones. The mobile phone is smashed apart using high-voltage current. Then the valuable printed circuit boards are retrieved by a robotic arm, and fed into a tiny furnace that uses precisely-controlled, high-temperature reactions to draw out the valuable metal alloys. Any toxic or unwanted materials can then be safely incinerated.
Rare-earth metals are critical to the high-tech society we live in as an essential component of mobile phones, computers and many other everyday devices. But increasing demand and limited global supply means we must urgently find a way to recover these metals efficiently from discarded products.
The annual demand for rare-earth metals doubled to 125,000 tonnes in 15 years, and the demand is projected to reach 315,000 tonnes in 2030, driven by increasing uptake in green technologies and advancing electronics. This is creating enormous pressure on global production.
Third, most mining for rare-earth metals occurs in China, which produces more than 70% of global supply. This raises concerns about long-term availability, particularly after China threatened to restrict its supply in 2019 during its trade war with the US.
The tables may be turning, though. In 2004, the owner of Mountain Pass, Molycorp, pledged that it had cleaned up its act and was granted a permit to restart the mining of rare earths. It takes many years to reboot such an involved operation, but in 2012, Molycorp said they were on track to produce nearly 20,000 metric tons of rare earths. This year, that amount should double.
Almost all technological products we use on a daily basis contain a group of elements known as the rare-earth metals. Abundant in technology and deemed by US Department of Energy as "technology metals" due to the fact that they are used in all sorts of technologies ranging from computers and screens, networks, MRIs, batteries, magnets, automobiles and various types of special optical glasses, as well as a catalyst for oil refining. As a matter of fact, this just a small sampling of examples, and the list goes on virtually touching every industry and modern technological devices. As an example of a technology that everyone is very familiar with is the smart-phone. A generic smart phone uses about 16 rare-earth metals! These metals give rise to striking colors such as green, blue and red due to their luminescent property. Additionally, rare-earth are responsible for making the smart-phones vibrate, are used in the speaker system, as well as in many of the electronic circuits that allow the phone to work. Although ubiquitous in usage, many people are not familiar with these elements and perhaps it is not a coincidence that their name on the periodic table derives from the Greek, "lanthanein," which means "hidden." So what are rare-earth metals and what makes them so vital for our technological sustinance?
Rare-earth metals are found in the earth's crust and although they are abundant, their concentration is low in the minerals and ores, which makes them hard to extract and their extraction may not always be economically viable. In addition to that, the extraction of these metals and mining process has a negative environmental impact. Moreover, although several countries, including the US have deposits of rare-earth, as I've said previously not all deposits are economically viable to mine. Currently, China controls 80% of the export market for the rare-earth elements. Apple has recently said that it wants to use recycled rare-earth metals for its products. Thus, finding alternative ways for producing rare-earth metals may provide better environmental protection as well as less reliance on price fluctuations due to various import-export regulations and currency fluctuations.
Scientists at Idaho National Laboratory, Livermore National Laboratory, Rutgers university and UC Davis have reported to find a new way to produce rare-earth metals using organic bio-acids, such as acids from fruits, and by product of phosphoric acid production, known as phosphogypsum. Phosphoric acid has a slew of industrial uses and is widely produced, thus finding a way to extract rare-earth metals from this byproduct is viable option. Scientists used synthetic phosphogypsum which was produced in lab and had a controlled composition, and used various acids to understand which acid was best at separating rare-earths most efficiently. Surprisingly, bio-acids did the best job! The next step of this research would be to apply industrial grade phosphogypsum found as a by product to refine the results of this study as well as understand how different compositions of phosphogypsum affects the ability of rare-earth metals to be extracted.
This embargo, in turn, sent shock waves through not only the rare earths market but also among users of these metals, including defense industries. While this led to a short-term price spike and some dislocations, the longer-term effects demonstrated the reality of free markets. In the wake of the Chinese decision, many countries either reopened mines and facilities that had been closed (e.g., the Mountain Pass mine in the United States) or began to survey their own territories to identify new sources.
In the years following the Chinese move, Australia and the U.S. both substantially expanded their production of rare earth minerals, as did Brazil, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam. New reserves were also identified in India and Canada. Most recently, Japan discovered a major offshore deposit of rare earths that is estimated to be able to meet centuries of demand.REF
With this renewed threat, however, Beijing runs the real risk of creating permanent competitors. Doubts about the security and stability of supply chains originating in China are likely to be exacerbated, especially given the national security uses for rare earth minerals. As important, having identified new reserves, other states may be able to access alternatives far more quickly now than they could in 2010, thereby limiting even the mid-term volatility caused by any Chinese action. 2ff7e9595c
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