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124 comments on Metal Minerals Scarcity and the Elements of Hope
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124 comments on Metal Minerals Scarcity and the Elements of Hope
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Hi Nate,
All(?) of the Chinese REE production comes from the Bayam Obo deposit in Inner Mongolia. My father(former Molycorp geologist with experience at Mountain Pass, California) worked on this for the Chinese back in the early eighties. During this period, China mined Bayum Obo as an iron deposit (very high grade specular hematite ore) and stockpiled the REE as they lacked the hardware and metallurgical expertise to process it. Processing is a bitch, as you must achieve five nines purity; .99999 - at that purity even stainless steel is too contaminative.
The deposit is very cool! It is(probably) a volcanic carbonatite...volcanoes with dolomite(like limestone but with Mg) lava. I have several specimens and a lot of translated Chinese scientific articles. One of the specimens is a flow-banded lava composed of fluorite, hematite and basnesite(a REE catch-all mineral); bands of purple, silver and white! Anyway, the deposit is huge.
There are other REE deposit which could be mined, but Bayam Obo is so big and rich and annual consumption so modest, that nothing else would be competitive...at least that is my take on it.
Processing is the principle cost, and it is very energy intensive, but the total finished production is pretty modest...the annual world supply of some of these REEs would fit in a briefcase.
thanks - i guess a good companion piece would be "How Dependent Are We Becoming on Rare Earth Elements?"
Mea culpa, there is more to Chinese REE production than just Bayan Obo. Sichyaun and southern china also product some as well.
Looks like annual Chinese production in 2005 was about 200,000 tons but the finished production of purified product would probably be less than 100,000 pounds, though that is just a WAG at this point.
As for dependency...haven't a clue really.
Hi Nate,
The German Fraunhofer Institute for System and Innovation Research (ISI) has recently published a book (in German) on our growing dependance on certain raw materials for emerging technologies. ISBN 978-3-8167-7957-5, google on "Rohstoffe fuer Zukunftstechnologien" and you will find a link to a pdf-version of the book.
Amonst others they conclude that in 2030 we would need 3.82 times current world production of neodymium (Nd) for applications such as permanent magnets and laser technology. In 2006, these applications account for 55% of global annual production of Nd.
These are geological marvels and sound beautiful. In some ways, it makes me sad that they are mined! Though not as visually conspicuous, it brings to mind the cutting of tropical forest for fine furniture wood.