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Renewable Technologies and Rare Earths


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What many people don't realize is that many of the 'green' technologies like solar panels or wind turbines or hybrid cars require rare earth metals to manufacture. Thanks to geography China controls 95% of world's supply of these metals and it actively using this control to restrict the supply available to other nations (thereby forcing people to buy chinese made products that use the metals).

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/busin...5017996,00.html

Don Burbar, the chief executive of Avalon Rare Metals, said: "The crux of the matter is that there are now a lot of technologies that can't work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply. China has positioned itself to retain control, and meanwhile politicians around the world do not appreciate how the supply side of green technology works."

In Japan, the world's biggest importer of rare-earth metals, more than 10,000 tonnes per year about a fifth of the country's total annual consumption are thought to enter the country through a thriving black import network without which Japan would already be in a severe supply crisis, a senior government official said.

China has been lowering its export quotas for rare-earth metals by about 6 per cent annually since the start of the decade, with Japan expected to be allotted only 38,000 tonnes in 2009. Toyota and Honda alone will consume about that quantity and experts in Australia have predicted a wider global supply crunch within three years as demand surges beyond existing refinery and extraction capacity.

All of those politicians who think that 'renewables' are going to save us from being held hostage by foreign suppliers are in for a rude awakening. In fact, China controls so much of the supply that it would be much more dangerous to make our economies dependent on these metals than oil.

Of course, that won't stop the AGW kool aid drinkers in the whitehouse from trying its best to destroy the US economy and take Canada with it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The 95% number is both wrong and unspecific. Which metals, specifically, are located 95% in China? Is it the current production that's 95% there, the estimated world reserves, what? It is in fact only the current production, due to economic conditions, and there are substantial amounts of various rare Earth metals on basically every continent. New rare Earth metal extraction sites are presently under development in and Australia, among others. Links to some of these projects:

http://www.gwmg.ca/pdf/Insinger_Report.pdf

http://www.gwmg.ca/projects/hoidas-lake

If China continues to restrict the supply, then more such projects will start up, as it will become economically viable.

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The 95% number is both wrong and unspecific. Which metals, specifically, are located 95% in China?
More specifics here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/go...-dependence.php

A single three-megawatt wind generator (modest, as utility-scale wind turbines go) contains more than a ton of super magnets, more than 700 pounds of which is neodymium. A typical hybrid car, such as a Toyota Prius, contains around 25 pounds of rare earth metals -- mostly lanthanum in its rechargeable battery and neodymium in its drive motor. "The global annual production of neodymium, essentially all of which is mined in China, is today at an all-time high," Lifton says. "There is no surplus -- the existing demand uses up all that's produced each year. So to build more wind turbines and hybrid cars, you'll need more neodymium. Where are you going to get it?"

With most other scarce resources we have plenty of known supply that is simply not economical to get at with current prices. If prices go up these sources become economic (the tar sands is a good example). The problem with rare earths is we don't even have the known supply that could meet the near term increase in demand and we are depending on the market to find something that might not exist in the quantities we need.

That said, I do believe the market will find more supply but the problem is we are dealing with an artificial demand created by government regulations. Wind turbines are not economic under any circumstances yet we have governments mandating the consumption of an extremely valuable resource in order to pander to loud activists. There are better uses for the material available and we should not be using these materals in anything that requires a government subsidy to exist.

Edited by Riverwind
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We always seem to limit our vision only to our own back yard. Nobody looks up!

Surely there must be rare earths in asteroids! Or perhaps a bit more expensive to mine, on the moon! Anyone who has googled more than casually through the idea of space mining knows that it is already practical and within our grasp.

The fact that these rare earths are so expensive makes them even better candidates for space mining.

Why not just cut China out of the equation?

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Actually the mineralogy of asteroids has been studied quite extensively and it's estimated that some asteroids contain up to hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of ores, some of which have higher concentrations of precious metals or rare earths than any ores on Earth.

Unfortunately, the present cost of transportation to and from the Earth dwarfs the prices of these materials. Asteroid resources will be extremely valuable once we start to build extensive facilities on the Moon, on Mars, or in space, but they will not be viable for use on Earth unless and until we build a space elevator, as that is the only presently foreseeable technology that could lower the cost of transportation sufficiently to make it economically feasible.

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Actually the mineralogy of asteroids has been studied quite extensively and it's estimated that some asteroids contain up to hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of ores, some of which have higher concentrations of precious metals or rare earths than any ores on Earth.

Unfortunately, the present cost of transportation to and from the Earth dwarfs the prices of these materials. Asteroid resources will be extremely valuable once we start to build extensive facilities on the Moon, on Mars, or in space, but they will not be viable for use on Earth unless and until we build a space elevator, as that is the only presently foreseeable technology that could lower the cost of transportation sufficiently to make it economically feasible.

Had the European age of exploration proceeded at the pace of our modern space exploration is going, the America's would still be in the hands of the First Nations. People like to cite costs and safety as the major draw backs of either manned or robotic space exploration and yet the costs faced by Spain, England, France, and the Dutch in exploring and opening up new trade routes and building colonies was just as pricey and fraught with danger. I have to wonder sometimes if we as a species have not lost more then a little bit of balls. It's been forty years since Armstrong first step on the moon, since then the best we've done is a series of manned LEO shots, a space station in LEO and blown up two shuttles.

1492. October 12. Columbus discovers the New World.

1497. The Cabots discover the continent of North America.

1498. Columbus on third voyage discovers South America.

1506. Columbus dies at Valladolid.

1507. New World named after Americus Vespucius.

1513. Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean and Ponce de Leon discovers Florida.

1519-1521. Cortez conquers Mexico. Magellan sails round the world.

1524. Verrazano and Gomez explore New England coast.

1528. Cabeza do Vaca explores southern United States.

1533. Pizarro conquers Peru.

1534. Cartier sails to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

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I totally agree with you and have often made the same arguments and similar analogies in my advocacy for increased space exploration, and am equally saddened by the slow pace of progress.

I'm all for expanding manned exploration of the solar system, establishing bases on the Moon and Mars, and mining the asteroids to provide resources for orbiting colonies. We should proceed with programs to colonize the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and eventually to terraform Mars. We should redouble research in advanced propulsion systems so the travel times between these types of destinations can be reduced from months or years to days or weeks. We should expand the role of nuclear technology in space exploration to provide the needed power for such endeavors.

Within a hundred years, I believe we can have settlements on dozens of bodies in the solar system and enumerable habitats in space. Within a hundred thousand years, unless we encounter more powerful alien civilizations, we should inhabit billions of solar systems within our galaxy, and the human-machine civilization will be indestructible until the universe dies its ultimate entropy death countless trillions of years in the future. Or perhaps, by then, we will find a way to survive even that.

But I'm also a realist, and I can tell you with certainty that for right now, returning raw materials to Earth from space, without the presence of a space elevator, is economically unfeasible, unless such materials are otherwise completely unavailable on Earth. In saying that, I'm not at all advocating against the mining of asteroids, I'm instead advocating for the prompt construction of a space elevator, which would expand our capabilities in space beyond the imagination of most people today.

Edited by Bonam
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China has it's peasantry handle a lot of our garbage - they pick through our old electronics and re-cyled garbage - and what takes place is pollution - rivers that assist in the growing of tumors the size of water melons...just wonderful - such a great future - it's all fun and games till someone gets hurt - but poor asian peasants don't really matter - they have a billion of them to spare.

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But I'm also a realist, and I can tell you with certainty that for right now, returning raw materials to Earth from space, without the presence of a space elevator, is economically unfeasible, unless such materials are otherwise completely unavailable on Earth. In saying that, I'm not at all advocating against the mining of asteroids, I'm instead advocating for the prompt construction of a space elevator, which would expand our capabilities in space beyond the imagination of most people today.

Why do we need an elevator to get started? I agree that it would drastically lower the price of getting payload into orbit but it would be irrelevant for getting ore and materials down to earth. Just let it fall!

Well, maybe it's bit more complicated. We would want to AIM the stuff! Still, a little nudge in the right direction and the stuff will fall where we want. It's just ballistics. In the zero gravity of the asteroids or even the 1/6 gravity of the moon a mass driver is a relatively cheap way of sending payloads in any desired direction.

If rare earths are that expensive and are going to be in such demand then maybe asteroid mining might PAY for the space elevator!

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Letting fall and aiming is (relatively) easy. The hard part is making sure it survives re-entry intact. You can't just take a load of ore and let it fall into the atmosphere. As you know, small asteroids that hit the Earth's atmosphere burn up and/or break up prior to hitting the surface, as do spacecraft when there is a malfunction in their thermal shielding. That means that for every load that we want to return to the Earth, we need to construct (in space) a re-entry vehicle.

A re-entry vehicle would almost inevitably have a mass greater than its cargo, as it needs to have a structure which can withstand the mechanical stress of reentry, thermal shielding that can survive the extremely high temperatures, and a system to slow it down prior to impact on the Earth's surface (i.e. parachutes). It must also have guidance and navigational systems, communications, controls, etc. Until we have an extensive space-based economy, these systems would have to be produced on Earth, then launched into space, to retrieve each cargo of rare earth metals.

This is all feasible, of course, but very expensive. Rare earth metals are not rare or expensive enough to justify such expense in their procurement. A quick Google search on a few of the rare earth elements revealed prices ranging from a few dollars to a few hundred per kilogram, depending on which element it is and its purity. See this chart for example.

A space elevator reduces the cost of lowering things down to Earth just as it does for raising things into orbit, since a slow descent on an elevator means that you don't need to survive the stress and heat usually associated with re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. In fact, power can (in theory) even be dynamically recovered from the descent of one payload at a controlled speed to provide (some of) the energy for the ascent of another payload.

Edited by Bonam
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Letting fall and aiming is (relatively) easy. The hard part is making sure it survives re-entry intact. You can't just take a load of ore and let it fall into the atmosphere. As you know, small asteroids that hit the Earth's atmosphere burn up and/or break up prior to hitting the surface, as do spacecraft when there is a malfunction in their thermal shielding. That means that for every load that we want to return to the Earth, we need to construct (in space) a re-entry vehicle.

A re-entry vehicle would almost inevitably have a mass greater than its cargo, as it needs to have a structure which can withstand the mechanical stress of reentry, thermal shielding that can survive the extremely high temperatures, and a system to slow it down prior to impact on the Earth's surface (i.e. parachutes). It must also have guidance and navigational systems, communications, controls, etc. Until we have an extensive space-based economy, these systems would have to be produced on Earth, then launched into space, to retrieve each cargo of rare earth metals.

How much stress can a bucket of ore withstand compared to a human being?

Why not just use some nickel-iron asteroid ore to smelt into steel, using solar power? You melt a blob of plastic or even silica glass with focused solar power and expand it into a large (maybe a few hundred feet) ball, using either a puff of gas or a small explosives charge. The gas puff can use mercury, silver or anything that leaves a reflective coating.

You then cut the ball into two halves. The arc is far from an efficient parabola but still, you get two CHEAP reflective focusing mirrors. There's your heat source for smelting iron ore!

You don't bother making complicated re-entry vehicles. You just make big "slugs" out of that steel! If they weigh more than a few tons and they are allowed to "fall" to earth on a low angle trajectory they will have no problem withstanding the heat of re-entry. You target them to hit close to the coast of your country, in shallow water. Targeting is simple ballistics that we've been doing for centuries. Battleships had no problem hitting targets over 20 miles away. This is just on a bigger scale of distance, that's all. That low angle trajectory not only reduces the heat of re-entry. It also reduces the velocity of the "slug", making a gentler splashdown with no need of parachutes, although if necessary that could be an easy further refinement.

We're not talking giant slugs here that would trigger dinosaur-killing tsunamis. You would have some big splashes but nothing dangerous. You haul the slugs up on land and truck them to your refinery. The rare earths are refined and the slugs are good for steel, at a dirt cheap materials cost!

Again, I'm not knocking the idea of a space elevator. Drastic reductions in the cost of moving people and materials into Low Earth Orbit would make space development much cheaper and easier. I'm just arguing that the same cost factors don't necessarily apply to bringing simple, rugged payloads like ore back to the earth's surface. Ball bearings, optical lenses, computer chip crystals, pharmaceutical drugs and the like are much more fragile and would benefit from a space elevator's cost reductions.

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  • 1 month later...
More specifics here:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/go...-dependence.php

With most other scarce resources we have plenty of known supply that is simply not economical to get at with current prices. If prices go up these sources become economic (the tar sands is a good example). The problem with rare earths is we don't even have the known supply that could meet the near term increase in demand and we are depending on the market to find something that might not exist in the quantities we need.

That said, I do believe the market will find more supply but the problem is we are dealing with an artificial demand created by government regulations. Wind turbines are not economic under any circumstances yet we have governments mandating the consumption of an extremely valuable resource in order to pander to loud activists. There are better uses for the material available and we should not be using these materals in anything that requires a government subsidy to exist.

I can make a home generator from about $20 of copper wire and rare earth magnets enouph to power your home it can be incorperated with wind, steam , hot air, bio fuel, air pretty much anything to think of how is that not economical?

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I can make a home generator from about $20 of copper wire and rare earth magnets enouph to power your home it can be incorperated with wind, steam , hot air, bio fuel, air pretty much anything to think of how is that not economical?

I can power my home with about $20 of copper wire some rare earth magnets and...air you say?

I'll bite. How?

Who do I send a cheque to for the plans?

Edited by eyeball
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I can power my home with about $20 of copper wire some rare earth magnets and...air you say?

I'll bite. How?

Who do I send a cheque to for the plans?

Craig1 has been wrong about just about everything he's written since he's arrived on MLW... but he's not wrong about this one.

Wind-powered electrical generators are a proven technology that's been in use for a very long time. Somewhere around 80 years ago, distant relations of mine powered electrical lights in their home using lead-acid batteries charged by a generator mounted on a "windmill" on their farm. (this was of course, back in a day when lights were about the only thing they used electricity for.) Currently, relatives of mine live "off the grid" in the far north of Alberta and run both solar and wind power; they've purchased commercially-built wind generators.

Of course, the principles of generating electricity using magnets and coils of copper are so widely understood that one needn't buy commercial products to make it happen, provided one has some ingenuity and some skill at building things. There are some enthusiastic do-it-yourself types who've made a hobby of generating electricity using wind power. One site providing a resource and meeting-place for hobbyists in the field:

http://www.otherpower.com/

Unlike the Bendini motor websites, this one contains stuff that actually works, based on real physics that any high-school graduate should be aware of. Lots of other stuff there, too.

-k

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Wind-powered electrical generators are a proven technology that's been in use for a very long time.
There is a huge difference between a small generator that produces a few kilowatts for home use and a network of 1 megawatt+ turbines for supplying the grid. In the latter case efficiency is really important because they need to get as much as they can out of every turbine.

That said, since the original post I have discovered that the rare earth magnets are only really necessary for smaller wind turbines because they simplify the control system. Large turbines can be built with electromagnets.

However, rare earths are still pretty critical to all of the technology we use today and it is disturbing that the current supplies are so concentrated in a single country.

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That said, since the original post I have discovered that the rare earth magnets are only really necessary for smaller wind turbines because they simplify the control system. Large turbines can be built with electromagnets.

So can smaller ones (most car alternators use electromagnets, I believe.)

The challenge isn't complexity, it's efficiency. A basic design (older car alternator, for instance, doesn't use complex control circuitry at all.) With the low cost and easy implementation of modern microcontrollers, some highly sophisticated control would be in reach of even home experimenter types. But tapping off some of the power to feed electromagnets would by definition reduce the efficiency of the system. Acceptable and unavoidable for a massive windfarm project, probably... but a real buzz-kill if you're trying to power your RV with a single windmill.

-k

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