Neodymium And Rare-Earth Elements Are Humanity's Future| Treasure Hunters | Spark

they invisibly lurk under our feet for centuries we didn't even know they existed but now they shape our

future

they open up amazing possibilities but at the same time they threaten to destroy our environment if you look at the periodic table there are a couple of rows that seem to be thrown off a bit ​they don't fit in there and they're in the background and people tend to ignore them volunteering at InFocus might look skinny in your youth the reason we started focusing on them I said they have a very exciting set of tech property questions to do again turning their factual feature about their essential feature is that they stick like glue it's actually very hard to pull them apart and 21 to 10 when i think about it i see them as a catalyst for

future

development in the 21st century no real development is going to happen without here sim as the hope of a bright future chemical animus long considered useless their properties were simply too

rare

only a few years ago researchers discovered their true value and that

spark

ed a technological revolution today they are more valuable than oil or gold metals These

elements

are considered

rare

because they were very difficult to chemically isolate once isolated.

They have properties that allow for a wide variety of modern technologies. Smartphones and tablets. Hybrid cars and electric vehicles. All of our modern devices contain rare

earth

s. Bow to China. world's largest rare

earth

s 97% of the world's supply of rare earths is mined in China You answer why apotheosis is not cool at all? the gas from your stereos all the other rare earth

elements

can be found in the china vehicle and when you talk about rare things at the time you automatically talk about the resources in china but in the necessities or in the bank arena on board from Angela, the open-air pizza arch is in fact an iron.

The ore mine began production in 1927. For decades, rare earths were considered a waste product until prices began to rise on the world market. A couple of decades ago, the Chinese discovered that the material lying above the iron ore at one location in Inner Mongolia was in fact rare earth ore and that they could from this material that had been dug up and discarded , they could separate the R bugs, huh, and began to produce unseparated rare earth oxides, so China became the world market leader only by chance. the head of the Chinese society. for rare earths think differently up to what is almost only gratifying in the back now you are capable and come well in the 50's china started exploration of rarer buildings in nature in the 60's we built our own processing system and we started mining operations lesson learned in the 80's and 90's we started mass production we got a bad pianist and i don't see any doubt by now we all rely on rare earth mind from china and they were refined in China with dirty and outdated methods, aborted by high-tech companies around the world to produce smartphones, electric cars and wind turbines. bouche still from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Darmstadt knows how difficult it is to produce rare earths, but the desert rubbish of the two should note that rare earths never occur alone, but always in groups in the cut, they are chemically very similar to separate them, you need very sophisticated processes that require a lot of chemicals and energy, only then you end up with the pure elements or metals in metallic order.

Braman's journey. Rare earths are already in short supply and expensive. World consumption has doubled. for the last 20 years and is still rising steeply, therefore researchers are looking for new deposits all over the world Andrea Kaczynski of the Institute for Geochemistry researches rare earth deposits in the Pacific Ocean is particularly interested in these strange nodules that are full of useful raw materials Devon Ostrava 2 stars there is a demand for raw materials and there are deposits on land, but many natural deposits are in remote sensitive ecosystems in the rainforest, for example, or in coastal areas or in countries where people work in subhuman conditions , all of these things could be prevented with deep-sea mining over the hawaii bird-eating opossum in honolulu harbor a research ship sailed aboard scientists looking for rare earths this election cycle a cantus number we've known for some time long as manganese nodules and manganese crusts on the ocean floor have relatively high metal content, especially nickel cobalt and zinc, but due to new technologies such as green power generation etc., the demand for rare earths is increasing and now we are more interested in these elements because of their economic value. tuned in to problems from the edge diving robots are scouring the seabed manganese nodules since 2006 the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources has been exploring two sites in the Pacific Ocean a video camera shows images of the ocean floor , but that's how it is? really so easy just harvesting natural resources from the seabed environmentalists are concerned about the destruction of the ocean floor where there are also quite complex life forms and the processes in the deep sea are very very slow everything grows and regenerates slowly , so if we interfere with such a system it's hard to predict how long it will take before it regenerates scientists hope to find millions of tons of rare earths in the Pacific enough to make us independent of supplies from China I've found far from this is an area of research that we've only just begun to explore, but we already feel it will be of much greater importance in the future.

This is one of our great challenges. If we want to harvest these modules. How do we get the raw materials from them? rare earth example andrea kaczynski wants to find out what is hidden inside these manganese nodules and how to get it out when eyes meet find out in our meaning now casino meter council yes like my endorsement you can see here that both nodules manganese have a call they need some kind of seed to start growing this seed like this little stone here in the middle just sit somewhere on the sea floor in the sediment at a depth of 4 or 5,000 meters it could be a fragment of a rock or a fish.

You don't see the tooth and at the bottom, where this seed is, chemical processes begin to deposit this black material, manganese and iron oxide around this inner core, but what exactly is this little nodule made of? it took millions of years to grow at the bottom of the ocean? Fine jam for the soft, we focus on high-tech elements like rare earths, for example, but we also look at the full spectrum of elements to get a sense of composition. If you want to mine rare earths, you must first extract them from this black material. there are no distinct clumps of rare earth minerals that you can just mechanically select it is a compound we first have to understand what this black stuff is made of only then can we develop methods to select for certain elements analyzes show manganese nodules contain high amounts of urgently needed rare earth raw materials for green technologies of the future, but is it okay to plunder the oceans to produce solar panels, electric cars and wind turbines, how green is our future if we have to destroy pristine ecosystems, we miss the anomaly ?

William makes a cylinder of Devon you have to keep in mind that there are many countries in the world that still have some way to go to build an infrastructure for an adequate standard of living and if these countries are going to use green technology and get there then they need new resources such as other rare earth sources too much professor Tian to build more wind turbines in solar power plants around the world we have to mine new rare earth deposits the difficulty is finding them in the first place so it might from the Talmud obtain some leaves pruning Arden for metals such as iron, chrome, zinc, lead, copper, etc., there are very specific deposits that we have zinc deposits, we have conducted divided well-defined structures from which we can easily obtain the metals, this is not is the case with rare earth color yes i'm talking about income being sucked in vancouver hopefully they will suffer right in the middle of a cornfield in saxony geologists hot lead during ddr times, scientists were looking for uranium here but instead they found rare earths, no one was interested in these strange elements back then the mine channels were closed but now a mining company is conducting test drilling again hoping to tap into the deposit largest rare earth in europe among the hopeful taga nada to tauntaun quia great if you are looking for investors and tell them we have some LGD. our papers then most investors will say yes they were written during the GDR socialist period so we don't really trust this which means we need to reconfirm the old data constant geologists got excited in deep in the rock 4.4 million tons of ore is supposed to be here is a boon for German high-tech industry that is completely dependent on rare earth imports from abroad, but how to dig the

treasure

a huge pit mine open in central germany not an option when digging this rarest deposit has a diameter of 130 meters the depth of 1,000 site this will make a gigantic hole we can't do this our best bet is to build an underground mine shaft before you this means we only need a deep shaft with a small rig on the surface and a few buildings around it the entire mining operation would take place underground expensive technically complex deep mining shafts for a small deposit is this economically viable data from the test drilling need to determine the concentration of rare earths in their to the naked eye they are invisible God shine there soon I am Antonia Kent man or gold shines beautifully diamonds can also be easily seen since rare earths are very discreet this cane looks like concrete it's gray and nothing shines nothing stands out we only know from geochemical analysis that there are rare earths here knowing of course we can look at the samples and say yes indeed rare earths are present but we can't see them with the naked eye view.

Neodymium strengthens magnets, reassures vivid colors on computer screens, and lanthanum generates electricity. Car batteries are more efficient, but for a long time scientists just didn't know what to do with these strangely named chemicals. do it yeah man wyndham desert #1 in wasilla visit bushes mencia oh god why and indle come the first apps for bugs were essentially limited to the elements cerium there were two apps one used it for lighter Flint and the other one was making glow mantles for gas lamps this was basically why people cared about rare earths later other applications for rare earths were found lanthanum for example made it gasoline production much easier and cheaper.

Washburn's simpler, ruined sandwich lungs. han-shan gas price would probably be 10-30% higher than it is now if it weren't for rare earths and it's already pretty high water mountain roads california long before china the united states were the main producer of rare earths a lot of people ask where do you find rivers and the simple answer to this is that you can find them in your backyard it's just that the concentration is so low you could never get it out the trick is finding rare earth deposits that are rich and great for decades the mind of the mountain pass was considered the most important deposit of rath in the world The beginning of the mountain pass district was around 1949 when prospectors found a radioactive signature in a rock outcrop which they analyzed in found that it was an ore remarkably rich in rare earth minerals the problem with deposits like the mountain pass if the elements in the grant land are often closely tied to other ethnicities many of these contaminants are radioactive to isolate the rare earths the mining companies use sulfuric acid nitric acid and hydrochloric acid this produces highly toxic radioactive effluents the reason rare earths do not exist as individual elements in nature lies in the geological formation of the deposits geologists tell us there were eight volcanic intrusions in which carbonate I Molten rock came out of that crack and just deposited layers one after another and built the whole deposit between 1965and 1995 the minor mountain pass was the world's largest producer of rare earths the raw materials were needed to make lighters gas lamps color televisions and to produce gasoline however production processes at the mountain pass were complicated and prone to failure in 1998 worst case scenario occurred billion liters of radioactive and chemically contaminated wastewater leaked from a collection pond and contaminated a nature reserve stricter environmental regulations made the mine unprofitable in 2002 mountain pass closed should i schedule It's anywhere, move it soon after you shut your mouth and go through a technological revolution.

Smartphones and flat screens conquered the world at the same time. Green cars, Mr. Adult, native power sources became popular. All these modern technologies need rare earths. Vertice Millard mentioned Vivian and subsequently seven billion people in 40 years will have an additional two to three billion leaves. These people need resources not only food and drinking water, but also Philippi rare earth metals that are used in mobile phones or cars or wind turbines in handicrafts under this means that the demand for raw materials will increase enormously in the future after everyone stumbled with debt called cabal tea strike beijing china at the same time as the americans pull out of the rare earths business the chinese take control of the new economic superpower is able to produce raw materials and finished goods and dumping prices in cities China's prosperous skyscrapers are proliferating and domestic demand for consumer goods is rising, for example, China has the most mobile phone users in the world as demand for smartphones and flat panel displays increases.

China's rare earth production increases accordingly, one by one. China, the world is now almost completely dependent on rare earths from China, nothing is crazy about spinning at FINA. Amamiya called Tyler for the last 10-15 years. China has taken over not only mining operations, but also the separation and production of refined rare earths. about 97% of all rare earths are now produced in china they are in a very dominant position in thorn and unsupported daze but in 2011 china government suddenly restrict their rare sex lords mines reduce their production consequently, the world has an idea of ​​how powerful China is. it has become because prices are skyrocketing on the world market Energy saving light bulbs, for example, suddenly become 25% more expensive on export for a number of reasons, one of which is that they have a very fast growing domestic market and they want to make finished products within their country instead of sending unfinished rare earth oxides to us.

The world wonders what are the reasons for this export restriction. due to environmental issues or the Chinese are just flexing their muscles evenly. The product of the southern industry often says in Edmonton and the buzz of ISM. Also, I don't want to rule out that restricting rare metal exports has something to do with tightening environmental regulations as she realized, but it almost certainly also has something to do with China's power over the world market. . This marked us at all. I'm sure it's checked. it can be done with processing which is complicated and difficult at the moment the processing is carried out in Japan, Europe and the US Many experts think that China also wants to control the refining of rare earths too soon.

China could also dominate the market for processed rares. in simulated furs, the reason China supplies 97% of the rare earth metals worldwide is because of the cheap labor costs in obedia mining, it's much cheaper than say in the house of the US exports Entire industries can no longer function without rare earths without them the lights will literally go out because, for example, energy saving light bulbs contain rare earths the US, European and Japanese governments filed complaints with the World Trade Organization against China and they are making plans to look for new deposits all over the world, how does our geostrategic dog work or not?

Initially, the idea strategically makes sense to protect their own minds and not loot their own departments with locals, for example, the United States has its own oil wells only they have not yet touched the capacity instead they bought oil on the world market you build a door i would do the same because i would not use my own supplies if i can get the same product cheaper in the world trafficker often supply work the kim and also it makes sense to protect the warehouses of raw material baggage klappa germany china's restrictive export policy it especially affects those who need large amounts of rare earths for their daily activities like the magnet manufacturing company max berman the founder of the company once invented the magnetic fridge door today the company works mainly for the automotive industry a special magnet for every application if you're having a moment meals from the dishwasher we currently produce over 50 different types of magnets for our customers new corn between need to hear it pollutants we produce 100 million magnets per year, which is equivalent to about a thousand tons of material, including 50 tons of rare earths.

Today all modern high-tech magnets use

neodymium

and dysprosium. These rare earth metals ensure that the magnets are stronger and have a longer life before the sauce. Boron magnets are used for sensors in wiper close range switches. We show you the locations and the legal system and in the steering systems where they control rotary or angular movements. This makes driving more comfortable and comfortable. for Plus vsq magnet makers in compton bar twosti ago for Kennebunk we can't see the woman we realized shortages triggered speculation

neodymium

oxide prices rose rapidly exploded tripled even quadrupled in two or three months the smokin being redundant loose noticeable we had production shut down and couldn't deliver on time missed deadlines and exploding costs crisis hit company hard my hopkins degree project involved some projects had to be canceled industry is desperately trying to avoid this commodity dynamic expensive and faulty supplies from the pharmacy for oscillation what has happened to magnet manufacturers is also happening to many other industries because, too good for all the rare earth consuming industrial sector in Central Europe and North America suffers the twin problems of high raw material prices and a strategic reliance on a single supplier majority in this case china - town of honey eaters and depression germany right here in idyllic saxony an inventor tries to help chemists in the honey industry high tech Volk ramp Alec is working on a method to recycle rare earths from industrial waste he enters uncharted territory IATI often teleplay lid up teller here on this board we have waste from the production of permanent magnets iron plays an important role but so do the rare earths such as neodymium is prozium and miam price in principle now we are trying to isolate these individual substances and series of young magnetic waste is first heated in the blast furnace the first step in the recycling process like Krypton weapons are useless show to hide take here if there are numerous types of high tech and green labeled waste in football we know that during the production of magnets a lot of waste accumulates and we have just started to develop recycling processes for this waste we separate the basic components for getting pure uncontaminated rare earth compounds that can then be recycled back into the economy just practice to see if in your field, the recycling processes that exist today are generally only capable of extracting one valuable component from waste material, but Volt Fan Palak is not happy about that, he wants to recycle all the materials contained in a magnet, an unfinished core system is not enough. just recycling gold from e-waste for example if you then discard all the other elements nicely let's conceive a dominated linear element picture it makes a lot of sense instead of mining and processing rare earths with environmentally harmful techniques, we could just recycle them from our waste, but the technology is still in its infancy and doesn't work for all rare earths. palak is currently working on the process to recycle the element neodymium. a rotary evaporator is used and here in the case of neodymium the dry substance undergoes a color change and goes from pink to blue you cook it that's Christus right now it's turned quite a nice blue this is the chemist of the shirt, do you always have something nice to wear? in good for your soul dealer here in the lab the procedure is already working but can you panitch make the recycling process work on an industrial scale could your method solve our commodity crisis it is definitely the right idea at the right time we all know cars Gasoline electric vehicles are outdated electric vehicles are the future, but their engines need powerful magnets with lots of rare earths.

When these devices are running, they actually generate a large amount of heat within them. Any inefficiency in the motor or wind generator is perceived as heat within the machine and therefore they have to operate at much higher temperatures than you might expect when talking about an electric car, oh and no dysprosium this isn't it's possible. manufacturers would prefer not to use it Ames the United States here in the small college town of Ames in Iowa bill mccollum has set out to revolutionize electric motor design his research is considered so revolutionary that the US government decided to get involved in the project that he and his team analyzed one of his latest magnetic compounds with an electron microscope for the electric motor of the future McCallum needs a completely new magnetic compound that does not contain expensive raw materials with current technologies magnets that are suitable for large-scale applications in Vehicles and wind power must have dysprosium.

Dysprosium is a heavy rare earth. Heavy rare earths are much rarer than light ones. In what we are currently using in electric vehicles there is up to eight percent by weight of the magnet and this is not sustainable to solve this problem Ames Laboratory scientists are experimenting with new magnetic compounds they would rather replace this prozium with Sirian because it exists in abundance unfortunately the magnetic properties of cerium are pretty poor however the secret is in the mix to begin with the compound heats up vigorously dysprosium is a big problem it's a problem for the chinese and it will be a problem for the rest of us because we use dysprosium at a higher rate relative to neodymium president IAM the other workers so it is natural abundance freshly mixed magnetic compound must now be prepared for analysis is reheated and poured into a rapidly spinning wheel a vacuum prevents air from entering in contact with the compound and contaminating it, the result is an ultra-thin metallic band that breaks into small pieces.

These bits contain only small amounts of the expensive element dysprosium, but scientists still hope they make a strong magnet. Actually, we only take advantage of dysprosium in certain places. around the magnet itself so if I have dysprosium in the center of the magnet it's not doing me any good it's wasted so their process is being developed to put the dysprosium only where it's required so this can reduce greatly the amount of dysprosium there is. in the lab next door shavings of the new mixture are prepared for analysis ultra-thin metal strips are affixed to the sample holder with glue for Bill McCallum each new compound is an attempt to get closer to the perfect magnet the search for the super magnet is a difficult process that requires a lot of time and money, however, the involvement of the US government shows that politicians are also beginning to see the importance of these types of projects for our future.

This is a pretty good curve now that we're seeing that there are various trade-offs that we can make and we think we could really make materials where we've reduced the dysprosium or removed this program and reduced the neodymium and still have the performance needed for use in vehicles. electrics the production facility of american sports car manufacturer Tesla the small company only produces electric cars and does not use rare earths in its motors as it is possible the secret is in the design of the motors they work without conventional magnets other manufacturers areworking now on similar devices one of the things we are seeing or have seen in the last two years and this was spurred by very high and unstable prices for materials coming out of china has been an effort on the part of car manufacturers and others users to redesign their products away from users if the price because magnets reach a certain point, it is an invariable point and they are going to go to something else recently, a large international car manufacturer started to cooperate with a small Californian company, the idea of getting rid of rare earths in all-electric vehicles, even expensive everyday cars zero-emission cars zero-emission power drivers wind turbines are spreading rapidly by 2020 will account for six percent of global electricity generation this is equivalent to an output of 130 nuclear power plants the problem the latest large scale offshore wind turbines are very powerful and require little maintenance but are powered by large magnets containing large amounts of rare earths a huge problem for the environment in reserve in general Ram Dass plays an important role for the alternative energy generation from which it comes you could say that renewable energy generation requires non-renewable raw materials and rare earths are a prime example of a five megawatt wind turbine, for For example, it contains 800 kilograms of neodymium and 200 kilograms of dysprosium in total one ton of rare earths for a single five megawatt wind turbine the largest emerging market for wind power is China here: manufacturers rely on rare earth metals to its turbines the latest models need up to 4 tons of the valuable raw materials great pressure on resources verts Borg Germany researchers at the Fraunhofer vasilich Research Institute are interested in the massive amounts of rare earths used in wind turbines and electric vehicles , but also in the minute amounts found in computers and mobile phones see today's gadgets as tomorrow's raw material warehouses the intensive Pizan Unimog in metal rock throw it trailer house rope how effectively we recycle rare earths from our waste as indians, or we don't recycle them inside at all, this has something to do with the fact that in most devices, rare earth metals are used only in small amounts and in many different forms. components our current recycling methods can only recover standard materials like copper, but not the rare earth metals that subfinis are concerned about, so we need to separate the different components, find them, and then concentrate them to remove the rare earth metals, but they soon arise all diseases and inveterate and complicated, however, recycling complex devices like mobile phones is difficult because no one knows the basic materials they are made of, not even the manufacturers themselves, many parts come from suppliers who, in turn, get its raw materials from other suppliers through Valen. mobizen, but first we need to know what are the basic materials at the moment, we are creating a database for various consumer products, such as mobile phones. raw materials to make recycling worthwhile Lauren Smith currently it is simply not economical to extract small amounts from a large pile of e-waste like mobile phones with a scanning electron microscope researchers are looking for even the smallest amounts of rare earths if we are to convert dirt into gold, we need to get to the heart of the matter at the molecular level, the discarded device reveals its hidden values, then you put up a tent in the garden, so MIT doesn't go to bed.

Oh, if only manufacturers realized that they are wasting valuable raw material if they stop. thinking about the money they make just by selling products then they will understand that this old device is a source to make new devices, HVD icon only then will we start to have a recycling economy because i love it. basic ingredients of a device the gray patches indicate rare earths it only takes a few seconds for the computer to figure out what they are made of the little gray dots contain neodymium a dysprosium valuable rare earth metals but there is still a long way to go until the recycling process i heard about Celia no chance it is easier France in erisa Europe certainly has the opportunity to lead the way in recycling Subhan Dean orphans we need these raw materials for our economy our industry needs them he is a portal to install Teagan fat burner in industry but our countries are poor in natural resources our land of id diamonds on the other hand we have developed recycling methods on the part of it so we are not starting from scratch funny and i think this is our chance what should draw which ones we bite I'm not just talking about recycling rare earth metals, but recycling all materials, including copper and aluminum.

The boot host means they wash you, daughter. I myself must work on recycling the raw materials from the disposal of old waste. I support because we are pioneers in this. field and it is a great opportunity for Germany and Europe biodiesel Meera's hamburger hamburger ice Knutson terrifying to discard invisibly as citizens and consumers must know what is really in the products we use what is their commercial value when we look at household waste we often discover more 10 or 20 mobile phones in the trash are usually simply incinerated but this is wrong this is no longer sustainable a cell phone is like a mine we are talking about urban mining and we need to recycle it this is important as gentlemen recycling is only economically viable is Isis only for recycled raw materials from primary raw material prices occurs right now this is not the case so now we are developing technologies that will be used in 5, 10 or 15 years if raw material prices continue going up will be profitable one day made the decision the americans to reopen the mountain pass that used to be the world's largest rare earth mine rising prices on the world market drives the project and the prospect of independence from chinese suppliers the investors expect a 15 to 20 percent share of the world market and stable prices use sophisticated technology to protect the environment the mining company promises to use cleaner processes in the future than in the past and still hopes to be cheaper than the all-powerful competition china in the processes that have typically been used in china, they use acids that are so aggressive that they chew up the thorium oxide that is present and it literally dissolves, for example if you take sugar and put it in water and it disappears in the water that is dissolve everything. well it dissolves so these strong chemicals will do the same thing to thorium and thorium ions that dissolve then it becomes a wastewater problem and it can leach into groundwater and contaminate it in our system that we have designed we designed we redesigned our chemistry in such a way that we avoid dissolving the thorium so it stays soluble and solid and then we just extract the rare earths from it and it took a while to figure out how to make those records as important as they may be to the future of our modern technologies, its environmental problems are difficult to control, however, many experts believe that these difficulties can be overcome, so we aim to be the true rare earth innovator in the world, the king of them, the most innovative company that exists. we're going to keep looking for new platform opportunities and trying to tackle these things as quickly as possible, but still until those tons of rare earths used in electric cars and wind turbines that exacerbate environmental problems are supposed to solve some of them. .

Olek who Victor Woods at least for the moment I do the benefits outweigh the debuff to his obviously we have to do everything we can to keep it that way so we have to work hard to ensure that the use of these items doesn't have any adverse effects we all know that the supply of raw materials is twinned li we have to start thinking about circular flows of potentially recyclable resources only then can we really reap the benefits of rare earths we are attacking it political environment fur trader industry we talk to politicians in that art we talk with industry representatives we talked to the EU Commission and things started to change two or three years ago people thought you were a fool when you talked about the commodity crisis today everyone is talking about it and everyone talks about weird stuff - the earth just as we need a more sustainable approach to growing our food, we need one to source our raw materials