rare-earth metals for the future

7/27/2019 Rare-earth Metals for the Future

1/6

Newsfront

R A R E - E A R T HF O R T H E F U T U RE c o n o m i c s , w o r k f o r c e a n d R & D w i l l d e t e r m i n e t h e

f u t u r e o f t h e s e c r i t ic a l te c h n o l o g y m e t a ls FIGURE 1 . Rare-earth magnets simiiar to this o n e , produced at Ames Lat)oratory using a new process, are criticai In many technology applications

A s demand for rare-earth metalsin a wide ran ge of technology ap-plications continues to increase,efforts to reestablish miningand production of rare-earth elements(REEs) is underway outside China,currently the dominant force in REEproduction. Future supplies of REEsand th e myriad products in which theyappear will depend less on absolutegeological reserves and global tradepolitics and more on issue s of economicviability, workforce development andtechnological inno vation.With Chinese REE exports shrink-ing to keep m aterial in the cou ntry forits own rising demands, developingan REE supply chain outside Chinaappears to be essential in meetinga global demand that is projected togrow from the c urre nt 140,000 ton/yr toover 200,000 ton/yr by 2015. Whethera diversified REE marketplace takesshape and whether global demand forREEs is met will be determined to alarge extent by how chemical engi-neers address challenges associatedwith mining economically, extractingmetals efficiently and developing waysto extend the current metal supplies.Energy dependenceIssues surrounding the supply of REEsare closely interrelated with those ofenergy consumption. The same is trueof other critical metals (box, p. 23). Inmany ways, meeting the demand formetal minerals depends on our ac-cess to cheap and plentiful energy, ex-plains Andre Diederen, analyst at the

TABLE 1 . SELECTED END-USES FOR RARE EARTH ELEMENTSLighf rareearfhsLanthanumCeriumPraseodymiumNeodymium

SamariumEuropiumGadoiinium

Major end-useHybrid eiectric-vehicleengines, me tal alioysAuto catalysts, petroieumrefining, metal alloysPermanent m agnetsAuto catalysts, petroieumrefining, magnets fortiard drives, lasersMagnetsRed color for televisionand computer screensiViagnets

Heavy rareearthsTerbiumDysprosiumErbiumYttrium

HoimiumThuiiumLutetiumYtterbium

Major end-usePhosphors, perma -nent magnetsPermanent magnets,hybrid enginesPhosphorsRed color, fluorescentiamps, ceram ics,metal alioy agentsGlass colo ring , lasersi\1edicai x-ray unitsCatalysts inpetroleum refiningLasers, steel olioys

Source: US . Geological Survey (USGS)

problem is not that we will run out ofmetal in the earth's crust," Diederensays, "it 's that mining and extractingit at curre nt rates will become prohibi-tively energy intensive."Removing ore from the ground andconcentrating the metals require hugeamounts of energy, and the energy re-quired grows exponentially with lowerore grades. "Because of energy con-straints, the largest parts of mineraldeposits are out of reach for economi-cally viable exploitation," Diederensays. A decades-old paradigm thatlower ore grades w ill be exploited w hena supply gap exists will no longer bevalid without cheap and plentiful en-ergy. And Diederen and others thinkthe world will likely reach an oil pro-duction maximum within the next tenyears and a coal production maximum

existing and undiscovered deposits isnot an issue, says industry consultantJack Lifton. "It's not about how muchis there," he says, "it's a bout how muchwe can d o . " Extracting and refining rareearth me tals is really a n economic prob-lem and a personnel workforce problem."The capital costs are staggering" forsetting up mining, refining operationsand infi-astructure, Lifton explains.Since every ore deposit is different, eachsite represents a unique chemical en-gineering problem, and "there are notenough chemical engineers with the[rare earth] ex pertise to do the j o b . "REEs not rare, but criticalOccupying the "lanthanide" row ofthe periodic table, REEs are actuallymoderately abundant in the earth'scrust, with some more plentiful than


2/6

Newsfrontoften not concentrated enough to alloweconomically viable extraction.REEs are nominally divided intolight and heavy rare earths, accordingto atomic number. Light rare earths,such as lanthanum and cerium, aremore common than heavy rare earths,which make up 1 to 20% of the totalrare earths in most known depos-

its, and may be more proneto shortage. Most REEs arefound in varying concentra-tions together in deposits ofthe mineral bastnsite, whichis mined as a primary m ineral.Other rare-earth material canbe found in the mineral mona-zite, which is typically located

FIGUR E 2. REEs have unique properties, whichgreatly com plicates efforts to find alternatives inend-use products

ems: ExhaustGas and Liquid Ox idizers

Unique Systems fo r Unique ApplicationsDetermining the most efficient and effectiveoption to control airborne emissions duringchemical process operations presents severalunique challenges. As with any add-on controlsystem , the goal is to minimize the annualizedtotal costs while maintaining proper operation.Drr fcopure'systems offer the most optionsfor environmental compliance in the chemicalprocessing industry. Drr conducts thenecessary engineering studies and analyseswhich result in the right environmental systemdesign for your company's compliance andenergy needs.

Environmental and Energy Systems

Drr Bcopure systems' feature:VOC, NOx and HAP Removal - 99% + efficiencyDestruction of Liquid and Gaseous PollutantsHighest Thermal and Destruction E fficiencyN p and NO^ Destruction CapabilitiesCustom Fuel Train and Burner SystemsHalogen TolerantConformity to API, ASME, and SIL SpecsCatalytic Solutions

Contact: Greg ThompsonPhone: + 1 (734)254-2314Email: [email protected]: www.durr.com

I D U R R I

in deposits of other ores and is recoered as a bj^roduct of uranium aniobium processing. Since various raearth oxides are often found togethsepa rating them is a major challengREEs have found widespread use high-technology products because their unique atomic properties, whimake replacing them with alternativdifficult (Table 1; Figure 2).One of the most important uses REEs is in perm anent magnets, whappe ar in products such as hybrid vecles, wind turbines and computer hadrives. The strongest p erman ent manet is made from alloys of neodymiuiron and boron (NdFeB magnet).Research and development projeinvolving such magnets are promineat the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Am es Labratory (Ames, Iowa; www.ameslab.goone of the few places outside Chiwhere basic research related to raearth metals is carried out. One projongoing there is led by renowned raearth expert Karl Gschneidner, whogroup has developed an improved pcess for ma king NdFeBmagne ts (Fig1). The new environmentally friendprocess eliminates waste and reducenergy consumption in producing tmagnets by 40-50%. The researchfound a way to eliminate a step from tconventional process in the transformtion of neodymium oxide to Nd masalloy. The strategy behind the singstep process may be applied to othareas, such as producing lanthanumaster alloy for nickel-metal-hydribatteries for electric vehicles.Chinese dominanceChina owns a virtual stranglehold rare earth production and processinwith 95% of rare-ea rth oxide minand 97% of rare-earth metals refin


3/6

KnowYour FlowFCI Flow Switchesand Flow Alarms

Ensuring fluid flows in industrialprocesses means increased produ ctivity,reduced shutdowns, and produc t qualityassurance. FCI has more than ten differentmodels with thousands o f configurationsto provide a flow switch or flow alarmoptimized for your application. Liquids, Gases, Slurries No Mo ving Parts Single and Dual Alarm Models Applications to 850 F (454 C) Widest Selection of WettedMaterials Built-in Temperature Compensation Full Instrument Agency Approvals 3-Year Warranty DC, AC and 4-20 m A Loop

Powered Versions Unique Non-Intrusive

Insertion Model

Learn How FCI Flow Switches Can SolveYour Applications Today. Visit:www.FluidComponents.com/

FlowSwitch

FLUID COMPONENTSINTERNATIONAL LLC

1755 La Costa Meadows DriveSan Marcos, California 92078 USAPhone: 760-744-6950,800-854-1993Persephonestraat 3-015047 TT Ti lburg,

Newsfrontutilization and training.China has recentlybegun red ucing exp orts ofrare earth metals, spark-ing shortage fears and ris-ing prices, hu t also stimu-lating activities towardproduction of rare-earthmetals outside China.Chinese economic growthand its adoption of alter-native energy technologyare driving its export reductions, alongwith efforts to address mining-relatedenvironmental concerns.

Peter Dent, VP of husiness develop-ment at Electron Energy (Landisville,Pa.; www.electronenergy.com) says hiscompany, a maker of samarium cohaltpermanent magnets, (Figure 3) hasnot had trouhle with supplies yet, hut"we are watching our own inventoriesand market prices very carefully."Most experts agree that China'sgradual export restrictions are notintended to starve the world of rare-earth metals and will correspond tonon-Chinese sources of rare earthshecoming availahle. Dent's company isamong many w ho suppo rt efforts to re-estahlish an alternative, non-Chinesesupply chain of rare-earth metals.A non-Chinese REE supplyEfforts on several fronts are aimed atboosting REE production outside ofChina, including plans to reopen formerREE m ines in the U.S. and South Africa,as well as develop rare-ea rth deposits inAustralia, Canada and elsewhere.An example of these activities is thereopening of a 55-acre rare-earth de-posit at Mountain Pass, Calif hy Moly-corp Minerals LLC (Greenwood Village,Colo.; vifww.molycorp.com). A fast-mov-ing project is underway at the mine,which had heen a major source of rareear th oxides from its sta rt in 1953 until1998, when mining stopped. Molycorp iscurrently producing rare earth oxidesat a 3,000 ton/yr pace from mined ma-terials that were stockpiled during theyears tha t the mine was operating.

In Jan uary 2011, the firm willbreak ground on a separations plantcapable of producing the full range of

FIGURE 3. Magnet manufacturers using REEs likethis molten samarium, are among those sup porting diversification of the rare earth supply chainsuite of processing improvements aseparations technologies designed efficiency and cost-effectiveness.Among the improvements is a nmilling process that increases recoery of rare-earth metals from the oOperations in China now generaachieve a 40% recovery, while the Mlycorp process should boost this ra te68% recovery. "This greater front-eefficiency continues to pay dividenin downstream processing," says Mlycorp spokesperson Jim Sims.Company engineers have also devoped a system for recycling wastewathat makes the plant an almost zerwastewater facility. In conventioREE processing, salt-laden water ismajor waste stream. In addition, Mlycorp will recycle the acids and basthat are needed to process rare eaoxides to avoid having to continuoutranspo rt chemical reagents to the siThe new plan t will be powered by off-the-grid natural-gas steam-powcogeneration system, Sims explaiBy mid-2012, the company will hoproduction to 20,000 ton/yr of raearth oxides. Molycorp will produmostly lanthanum, cerium, neodyium and praseodymium at the si te, hwill also generate smaller amountssamarium, terhium, europium, gadlinium, erhium and dysprosium.

Molycorp is executing a "mines-magnet" strategy, which seeks to egage in REE production at every poon the sup ply cha in, from ore to refinmetal oxide, to final products. As pof the strategy, Molycorp is p artn eriwith magnet producers.Another exam ple of the re-emergenof a rare-earth-metals industry outsiChina is Avalon Rare Metals Inc.'s (T


4/6

NewsfrontCanada's Northwest Territories. Oper-ations at the Thor Lake site will mill,crush and concentrate the mineralsin the ore. Avalon is also planning tobuild a hydrometallurgical plant tofurther concentrate the 15 REEs pres-ent in the ore into a chemical concen-t rate. It is also conducting a scopingstudy for a separation plant to isolate

th e 15 elements into individual rare-earth oxide products.Avalon CEO Don Bubar explainstha t the Thor Lake deposit has sev-eral desirable qualities that increaseits potential economic viability. Oneadvantage is t ha t the site containsan unusually high concentration ofseveral scarce, heavy REEs currently

The Smartest DistanceBetween Two Points.Pneumatic Conveying Systemsfrom VAC-U-MAX.

VAC-U-MAX isa premier manufacturer of custom pneumaticsystems and support equipment for conveying, batching,an d weighing materia ls. With a VAC-U-MAX system onsite, your company's product can move gent ly andquickly f rom point to po in t , w i th no th ing in the way toimpede the efficiency of its movement .Count on us for: Decades of engineering and conveying expert ise. Customized solut ions that

meet your specific needs.Because our systems areno t "off the shelf," theyare always on the mark.

Reliable equ ipm ent that'sproudly made in America.

Our Airtight Performance Cuarantee". We standbehind every system we engineer. And we say itin wr i t ing .

For more in format ion about our custom-engineeredpneumatic systems and solutions, call:

1-866-239-6936or visit online at:www.vac-u-max.com/convey

Air-driven solutions.

Belleville, New |[email protected]

in high demand, such as terbium andysprosium. In addition, the depocontains recoverable byproducts, icluding zirconium, tantalum and nbium, which are valuable themselveAvalon has moved its process tecnology developmen t into the pilot stagAn interesting aspect of Avalon's REprocessing plant is a planned sulfuracid production facility to generate tacid required to break down the minminerals. "The amount of sulfuric acneeded is a challenge," Bubar explaiand it makes more sense to produceonsite rather than transport the hudreds of thousands of tons per yerequired to process rare earth s. Avalanticipates beginning full operatioat the plant in2015.Governments outside China are algett ing the message about the impotance of rare earth metals. For exaple, in the U.S., the Rare Ear ths Suply-Chain Technology and ResourcTransformation Act (H.R. 4866) wintroduced by Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo.) in the House (a similar senabill, S.3521 , also exists). The bills adesigned to spur rare-earth mineraproduction, refining, purification, mals production, allojdng and magnproduction. Among the provisionsthe bill is one that would establishnationa l stockpile of RE Es.Extending REE suppliesEven with a diversified set of raearth suppliers around the world,is likely that future demand will hato be addressed in a host of differeways. Strategies likely to be exploractively include searching for waysimprove mining a nd milling operatioand chemical processing approachesmaximize m etal yields from the ore.Other strategies involve findiways to recycle rare-earth metasuch as recovering and reusing scrmaterial from the permanent magnmanu facturing process. Ames Labotory researc her Alan R ussell says "Rcycling magnet scrap is a difficult, bnot insoluble, problem," adding thresearch grants for tackling the prolem would be helpful.

For recycling metals, the econom


5/6

CRITICAL METALSGO WELL BEYON DRARE EARTHSr ion ly group of elements with cleartechnological importance and con-cern over future supplies. In 2008, theNational Research Council (NRC), theresearch arm of the National Acad-emies (www.nationalacademies.org),explored the relationship betweenmetal minerals and the U.S. economy.The research group, led by industryconsultant Stephen Freiman, deviseda Metals Criticality Matrix that as-sessed the impact of supply restrictionsof various metals on the economy. Theanalysis depends heavily on the easeor difficulty of substituting away fromthe mineral in question. Along with therare earths, the NRC mentioned in-dium, niobium and the platinum g roupmetals (including rhodium and palla-dium) as ranking high on the MetalsCriticality Matrix. Others have pointedto metals such as germanium, galliumand the tungsten-group metals as alsohaving high criticality. Rare-earth metals in post-consumerwaste may be too diffuse and too diffi-cult to extra ct economically, but in dus-trial recycling may be a more achiev-able goal, says cons ultant Lifton.TNO's Diederen points out thatrare-earth recycling, as well as other

metal recycling, should be viewed frommore of a product lifecycle perspective.Specifically, R&D projects aim ed at ex-tendin g product lifetimes would be im-portant, as would conducting upfrontproduct design to make future recy-cling of the material more amenable.Although substitutes for the rare-earth metals are difficult to find with-out sacrificing performance in manycases, Morley points out that it mayend up bein g more fruitful to look

for substitutes not for the rare-earthmaterials themselves, but for alterna-tives to the products and applicationsfor which they are required.Another strategy for extending REEsupplies involvesfindingways to reducerare-earth metal content in products asa w ay of lessening overall dem and. Anexample comes from Ames Laboratory,where researcher Bill McCallum is in-vestigating how to lower the rare- earthcontent in the permanent magnetsthat are used in the traction motors ofhybrid electric vehicles.A final approach would be to find al-

another purpose. University of Leeds(Leeds, U.K.; www.leeds.ac.uk) materi-als scientist Animesh Jha discoveredthat rare-earth metal oxides are pro-duced as co-products in a process he andcolleagues were working on for refiningtitanium dioxide from the m ineral ilme-nite. Depending on the titanium miner-als they use, the rare -earth content can

be up to several percent. In the titaniumdioxide process, a colloidal layer is gen-erated th at w as found to contain lan tha-num, cerium, praseodymium and otherrare-earth metals. The researchers areworking on improving the recovery rateof the rare earths beyond the O-SCX)presently achievable.

Scott Jenkins

LIST DRY PROCESSING savesresources, energy, time and money.Switch to a new, truly innovativeapproach to running your process inthe concentrated phase. Get ready. Lower operating costs Less solvents Less product handling

Visit us atK 2 0 1 0October 27 - November 3in Dusseldorf, GermanyBooth 9C24

LIST


6/6

Copyright of Chemical Engineering is the property of Chemical Week Associates and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

rare-earth metals for the future

Documents