Tech|5/09/2012 @ 12:37PM |245 views The Rare Earths Problem:...

Tech|5/09/2012 @ 12:37PM |245 views

The Rare Earths Problem: It's Not Being Solved The Right Way

Tim Worstall, Contributor

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/09/the-rare-earths-problem-its-not-being-solved-the-right-way/?ss=strategies-solutions

Yes, there’s a problem in the rare earths industry. We need these 17 metals to make our new electronic gizmos and also to power much of the renewables industry that we’re so keen on building. The problem being that China has some 97% of current production and is limiting the export of what is produced. There are those who suspect that the aim is to get manufacturing done using rare earths to take place in China, rather than export the raw materials and allowing the value adding to be done elsewhere.

There is a solution to this, it’s not going to be long in coming now either. Open up rare earth mines outside China and thus free the global economy from that dependence. As Molycorp, Great Western Minerals and Lynas Corporation are doing*.

However, there’s what I consider to be a serious problem in the way, the method, that this problem is being addressed.

The expensive machinery lies silent, idling as Malaysia’s government weighs a delicate decision to allow shipments of raw material to arrive from Australia and finally start operations at the world’s largest rare earths plant outside China.

At the industrial estate on the country’s east coast, 20 or so protesters gathered in the searing afternoon heat have begun a chant. “No to Lynas. Lynas go home!”.

The handful of demonstrators seems an unlikely obstacle to plans by Australia’s Lynas Corp to build its company-making 2.5 billion ringgit ($800 million) plant, seen as crucial to challenging China’s near monopoly on the production of rare earths, used in items ranging from smartphones to smart bombs.

It’s that $800 million figure. That’s the capital cost not of the new mine. That’s the cost just of the plant to separate the 15 lanthanides, one from each other. The plant’s capacity is to be 22,000 tonnes a year, meaning that in the way the industry measures these things we’ve a capital cost of $40,000 tpa or so. $40,000 per tonne per annum of throughput. There are, of course, running costs on top of that (both labour and a truly incredible amount of acid is used).

It is there that I think the industry has gone wrong. They’re recreating what is essentially 1960s technology, so called “solvent extraction”. This is, in very rough terms, boiling the ore repeatedly in strong acids. One director of one of those three companies has told me that the running costs are $5 to $7 per kg material processed. That’s on top of that huge capital cost. I wasn’t sure that I believed those figures but he did assure me they were right.

It is of course their money and their right to spend it as they wish. But I can’t help thinking that there should have been just a little more attention paid to alternative methods of separating those lanthanides. There are several described in the literature and at least one of them appears to be both markedly cheaper and also possible to operate on a much smaller scale. That last would mean that smaller deposits of rare earths become viable and thus increase security of supply.

I’m just surprised, disappointed in fact, that none of the various governmental initiatives into solving this rare earths problem appear to be even thinking about researching such new technologies.

* Disclosure, I know and have talked to people at those companies in my day job but have no direct commercial relationships with any of them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/09/the-rare-earths-problem-its-not-being-solved-the-right-way/?ss=strategies-solutions