There has been a lot of coverage in the media recently about rare earth elements and how the future of the technology industry is at risk from a lack of supply and countries exploiting global monopolies. Items like your phone, your TV, laptops, military grade alloys, new renewable energy sources, magnets, lasers, tinted glass and fake diamonds all use rare earth elements and almost all of them are sourced from one country, China. But what are rare earth elements and how can a group of metals cause the whole world to go into panic mode?
Rare earth elements are a collection of elements in the Periodic Table, namely the lanthanides as well as scandium and yttrium. These elements are important because their compounds form some of the most commercially useful products in the electronic industry. For example, neodymium is one of the elements that make up the most powerful magnets known to man. These very strong magnets are crucial for making the hard drives in laptops and allow mobile phones to have millions of functions while still being compact. These magnets are also essential for generating electricity in wind turbines and hydroelectric dams. In addition, they also make up the components that can turn sunlight into power for solar arrays.
So we have established these elements are important for many modern luxuries but why should we worry about them. Well the rare earth elements are different from other resources like iron, aluminium or coal because of what countries in the world manufacture them. Or rather, which country as China controls over 95 % of the rare earth element market, a figure unmatched by any other global resource. This means that any end product that contains rare earth elements almost definitely has some from China in it. However, it is this strong control that China has over the resource that worries many global economies.
At the moment China currently exports most of its rare earths to Japan and South Korea to be turned into electronic equipment. However in an update of the 5 Year Plan philosophies they have introduced export quota’s that severely restrict international trade but focus on domestic companies. If China were to continue on this trend all investment in the rare earth industry would be forced into China. Evidence for this is that the only rare earth processing plant, where the minerals are purified and extracted, is in northern China, in Bayan Obo, Inner Mongolia. In all this would devastate the industry and critically affect not just major technology manufacturers but the workforces and economies that revolve around this commercialism.
Some of you reading this may think, why does the rare earth industry not just expand into other countries? Well this is happening, albeit very slowly. As of early 2012 there are two sites globally that could take up some of the strain of China’s restraint; Molycorp’s site in south-western California and the Australian company Lynas’s site in Indonesia. However these companies have problems trying to scale up to what China has achieved across many sites using many different mining techniques. In addition certain issues with the environment and worker health have hindered progress.
It may be that you never think of rare earth elements again, blissfully unaware of them in every gadget you own. But if you do remember what they are, remember the on-going power struggle and how our future industries depend on how greedy one country can be.
Alex Owen - Camp Hill Boys - Alex has been researching for an EPQ on the topic of rare earth elements
No comments:
Post a Comment