platinum
Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China
Laptops, cars, smartphones, TVs, MRI scanners, LCD displays, light bulbs, optical networks, jet engines, cameras, headphones, nuclear reactors. It might seem like a random selection of high-tech gizmos, but every single object on that list has one very important thing in common: Their manufacture requires one or more rare earth metals.
Rare earths — a block of seventeen elements in the middle of the Periodic Table — aren’t actually all that rare, but they tend to be very hard to obtain commercially. Generally, rare earth elements are only found in minute quantities in mineral deposits of clay, sand, and rock (earths!), which must then be processed to extract the rare metals — an expensive process, and also costly for the environment as billions of tons of ore must be mined and refined to yield just a few tons of usable rare earths.
Many rare earths are also geochemically rare — they can only be mined in a handful of countries. This is simply down to Mother Nature being a tempestuous so-and-so: Some countries have deposits of rare earths, and some don’t. This results in massively skewed production (China famously produces 97% of the world’s rare earth metals), and, as you can imagine, a lot of national security and geopolitical troubles, too.
It doesn’t stop with rare earths, either: Many other important elements, such as platinum, are only available from one or two mines in the entire world. If South Africa sustained a huge earthquake — or was on the receiving end of a thermonuclear bomb, perhaps — the world’s supply of platinum would literally dry up over night. The continued existence of technologies that rely on platinum, like car exhaust catalytic converters and fuel cells, would be unlikely.
If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord — some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of the bloodiest wars since World War II. Not only do the proceeds from coltan exports get spent on weapons, but the main focus of the wars were the stretches of land rich in diamonds and coltan.
Also along the same humanist vein, it’s important to note that extracting these rare elements is usually a very expensive and disruptive activity. Indium, probably the single most important element for the manufacture of LCDs and touchscreens, is recovered in minute quantities as a byproduct of zinc extraction. You can’t just set up an indium plant; you have to produce zinc in huge quantities, find buyers and arrange transport for that zinc, and then go to town on producing indium. In short, extracting rare elements is generally a very intensive task that is likely to disrupt or destroy existing settlements and businesses.
The rare earth apocalypse
The doomsday event that everyone is praying will never come to pass, but which every Western nation is currently planning for, is the eventual cut-off of Chinese rare earth exports. Last year, 97% of the world’s rare earth metals were produced in China — but over the last few years, the Chinese government has been shutting down mines, ostensibly to save what resources it has, and also reducing the amount of rare earth that can be exported. Last year, China produced some 130,000 tons of rare earths, but export restrictions meant that only 35,000 tons were sent to other countries. As a result, demand outside China now outstrips supply by some 40,000 tons per year, and — as expected — many countries are now stockpiling the reserves that they have.
Almost every Western country is now digging around in their backyard for rare earth-rich mud and sand, but it’ll probably be too little too late — and anyway, due to geochemistry, there’s no guarantee that explorers and assayers will find what they’re looking for. The price of rare earths are already going up, and so are the non-Chinese-made gadgets and gizmos that use them. Exacerbating the issue yet further, as technology grows more advanced, our reliance on the strange and magical properties of rare earths increases — and China, with the world’s largest workforce and a fire hose of rare earths, is perfectly poised to become the only real producer of solar power photovoltaic cells, computer chips, and more.
In short, China has the world by the short hairs, and when combined with a hotting-up cyber front, it’s not hard to see how this situation might devolve into World War III. The alternate, ecological point of view, is that we’re simply living beyond the planet’s means. Either way, strategic and logistic planning to make the most of scarce metals and minerals is now one of the most important tasks that face governments and corporations. Even if large rare earth deposits are found soon, or we start recycling our gadgets in a big way, the only real solution is to somehow lessen our reliance on a finite resource. Just like oil and energy, this will probably require drastic technological leaps. Instead of reducing the amount of tantalum used in capacitors, or indium in LCD displays, we will probably have to discover completely different ways of storing energy or displaying images. My money’s on graphene.
By Sebastian Anthony
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/111029-rare-earth-crisis-innovate-or-be-crushed-by-china
Platinum chromium stent system approved by FDA
Boston Scientific announced that its next-generation everolimus-eluting platinum chromium coronary stent system was approved for the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease.
The PROMUS Element Plus Everolimus-Eluting Platinum Chromium Coronary Stent System (Boston Scientific) was designed specifically for coronary stenting. It utilizes a proprietary platinum chromium platform, enabling thinner struts and enhanced visibility and making the stent more comfortable with less recoil and higher radial strength, according to the company.
The FDA approval was based on the PLATINUM clinical program, which included five multicenter studies that comprised more than 1,800 patients worldwide. Clinical outcomes supported the safety and effectiveness of the PROMUS Element stent at 30 days and 9 months, with low rates of incomplete stent apposition and demonstration of acute procedural benefits. When compared with the PROMUS stent for the treatment of de novo coronary artery lesions, the PROMUS Element stent demonstrated clinical noninferiority and procedural benefits of reduced rates of geographic miss and unplanned stenting, according to previously released data
“The clinical results we observed with the PROMUS Element stent compared with the PROMUS stent in the large-scale PLATINUM Workhorse trial, including extremely low rates of stent thrombosis, demonstrate that excellent clinical outcomes are achieved with this novel coronary stent system,” Gregg W. Stone, MD, professor of medicine and director of research and education at the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy at Columbia University Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said in a Boston Scientific press release.
Currently, the PROMUS Element stent system is offered in a matrix of 74 sizes, ranging in diameter from 2.25 mm to 4 mm and lengths of 8 mm to 32 mm. Additional stent lengths of 32 mm and 38 mm are expected to be available in mid-2012.
Source: http://www.cardiologytoday.com/view.aspx?rid=89872
U.S. Preparing for the Coming Shortages in Metals and Minerals
Many if not most metals, rare earth minerals and other elements used to make everything from photovoltaic panels and cellphone displays to the permanent magnets in cutting edge new wind generators and motors will become limited in availability. Geologists are warning of shortages and bottlenecks of some metals due to an insatiable demand for consumer products.
2010 saw China restrict the export of neodymium, which is used in wind generators and motors. The move was said to direct the supplies toward a massive wind generation project within China. What happened was a two-tiered price for neodymium formed, one inside China and another, higher price, for the rest of the world.
Dr. Gawen Jenkin, of the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, and the lead convenor of the Fermor Meeting of the Geological Society of London that met to discuss this issue is reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, highlighting the dangers in the inexorable surge in demand for metals.
Dr Jenkin said: “Mobile phones contain copper, nickel, silver and zinc, aluminum, gold, lead, manganese, palladium, platinum and tin. More than a billion people will buy a mobile in a year — so that’s quite a lot of metal. And then there’s the neodymium in your laptop, the iron in your car, the aluminum in that soft drinks can — the list goes on…”
Jenkin continues, “With ever-greater use of these metals, are we running out? That was one of the questions we addressed at our meeting. It is reassuring that there’s no immediate danger of ‘peak metal’ as there’s quite a lot in the ground, still — but there will be shortages and bottlenecks of some metals like indium due to increased demand. That means that exploration for metal commodities is now a key skill. It’s never been a better time to become an economic geologist, working with a mining company. It’s one of the better-kept secrets of employment in a recession-hit world.”
There’s a “can’t be missed” clue on education and employment prospects. “And a key factor in turning young people away from the large mining companies — their reputation for environmental unfriendliness — is being turned around as they make ever-greater efforts to integrate with local communities for their mutual benefit,” said Jenkin.
Among the basics that need to be grasped to understand the current state of affairs are how rare many metals, minerals and elements really are. Some are plentiful, but only found in rare places or are difficult to extract. Indium, for instance, is a byproduct of zinc mining and extraction.
Economics professor Roderick Eggert of the Colorado School of Mines explains at the U.S. Geological Survey meeting indium is not economically viable to extract unless zinc is being sought in the same ore. Others are just plain scarce, like rhenium and tellurium, which only exist in very small amounts in Earth’s crust.
There are two fundamental responses to this kind of situation: use less of these minerals or improve the extraction of them from other ores in other parts of the world. The improved extraction methods seem to be where most people are heading.
Kathleen Benedetto of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. House of Representatives explains the Congress’ position for now by saying in a report abstract, “China’s efforts to restrict exports of mineral commodities garnered the attention of Congress and highlighted the need for the United States to assess the state of the Nation’s mineral policies and examine opportunities to produce rare earths and other strategic and critical minerals domestically. Nine bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to address supply disruptions of rare earths and other important mineral commodities.”
Another prominent session presenter Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey adds in her report abstract, “Deposits of rare earth elements and other critical minerals occur throughout the Nation.” That information puts the current events in the larger historical perspective of mineral resource management, which has been the U.S. Geological Survey’s job for more than 130 years. McNutt points out something interested citizens should be aware of, “The definition of ‘a critical mineral or material’ is extremely time dependent, as advances in materials science yield new products and the adoption of new technologies result in shifts in both supply and demand.”
The geopolitical implications of critical minerals have started bringing together scientists, economists and policy makers. Monday Oct 10th saw the professors presenting their research alongside high-level representatives from the U.S. Congress and Senate, the Office of the President of the U.S., the U.S. Geological Survey, in a session at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.
Those metals, rare earth minerals and elements are basic building materials for much of what makes energy efficiency, a growing economy, lots of employment and affordable technology possible. Its good to see some action, if it’s only talking for now. At least the people who should be keeping the system working are sensing the forthcoming problem.
Source: OilPrice.com
The Most At Risk Metals
Much has been made, maybe too much, of the dire straits the world will shortly be in when the Chinese finally choke off supplies of rare earth metals, or elements (REE) to the outside world. No one would deny REEs have many critical uses, but you can’t help wondering if there aren’t a lot of vested interests behind some of the clamor.
In the process, the supply side constraints on many other metals (with a few exceptions) are overlooked, until now, that is. The British Geological Survey has produced an intriguing report called the Risk List 2011. The analysis is, in their own words, intended to give a quick and simple indication of the relative risk to the supply of 52 chemical elements or element groups which we need to maintain our economy and lifestyle.
The list is much more than a simple list of rarity, REEs being a case in point; they are not rare, but the combination of relative abundance, location of deposits and concentration of production in certain countries makes them a much higher risk than metals that are rarer, but whose production is more widely distributed among politically reliable sources. Each element is given a score from 1.0 to 5.0 for each of the following criteria:
A score of 1 indicates a low risk, a score of 5 a high risk. The scores for each criterion are summed to give an overall risk to supply score, obviously the larger the score, the greater the risk.
Low-Risk Metals
The lowest scores are (from the bottom up):
- Titanium 2.5
- Aluminium 3.5
- Chromium 3.5
- Iron 3.5
- Thorium 7.0
- Bismuth 7.0
- Rare Earth’s 8.0
- Tungsten 8.5
- PGM’s 8.5
- Antimony 8.5
No major surprises there. Occurrence is plentiful and widely distributed, as is production. One may have expected to see titanium and chrome, both of which rely in part on supplies from Russia and South Africa, to have scored a little higher, but the report lists Australia and Canada as the leading producers for the first three and although China is listed as the leading producer for iron ore, they are also the leading consumer and a net importer.
Higher-Risk Metals
Unfortunately, not so at the other end of the list. China comes out as the leading producer of 27 of the elements listed and ranks as the leading producer in six of the top nine most at-risk elements, all of which are metals. The reason we chose nine instead of the top 10 is because items 10 and 11 are bromine and graphite respectively, but following these, the list promptly gets back into metals through the middle orders.
Extract from BGS Risk List 2011:
*PGM’s include the Platinum Group Metals: Ruthenium, Palladium, Osmium, Iridium and of course Platinum, but interestingly Rhodium is not mentioned. Source: British Geological Survey.
How often do we hear of supply risks to antimony, mercury or tungsten? Yet these metals are used in a bewildering array of applications. China produces nearly 90 percent of the world’s mined antimony and 85 percent of the world’s mined tungsten, according to the USGS. Arguably, tungsten is as critical as REEs, used as it is in a huge array of metal alloys for electrical, strength and wear resistant applications. Like REEs, China is restricting exports of tungsten and the BGS ranks the supply risks as even higher than REEs.
The purpose of the Risk List is not to cause alarm, but to alert policy makers and consumers to possible supply disruption in the future. As competition for resources grows, these metals currently present the highest risk due to geopolitics, resource nationalism (state control of production), strikes and natural disasters impacting a highly concentrated supply base. Metals buyers and product designers could do worse than spend a few minutes perusing this list and reflecting on their own raw material supply arrangements.
By Stuart Burns
September 15th, 2011
www.agmetalminer.com
Critical Minerals, Elements, Metals, Materials
In this article I am going to take a look at three reports covering what the US and Europe consider critical or strategic minerals and materials.
In its first Critical Materials Strategy, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focused on materials used in four clean energy technologies:
- wind turbines: permanent magnets
- electric vehicles: permanent magnets & advanced batteries
- solar cells: thin film semi conductors
- energy efficient lighting: phosphors
The DOE says they selected these particular components for two reasons:
- Deployment of the clean energy technologies that use them is projected to increase, perhaps significantly, in the short, medium and long term
- Each uses significant quantities of rare earth metals or other key materials
In its report the DOE provided data for nine rare earth elements: yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, europium, terbium and dysprosium as well as indium, gallium, tellurium, cobalt and lithium.
Five of the rare earth metals, dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium as well as indium, were assessed as most critical in the short term. The DOE defines “criticality” as a measure that combines importance to the clean energy economy and risk of supply disruption.
Securing Materials for Emerging Technologies
A Report by the APS Panel on Public Affairs and the Materials Research Society coined the term “energy-critical element” (ECE) to describe a class of chemical elements that currently appear critical to one or more new, energy related technologies.
“Energy-related systems are typically materials intensive. As new technologies are widely deployed, significant quantities of the elements required to manufacture them will be needed. However, many of these unfamiliar elements are not presently mined, refined, or traded in large quantities, and, as a result, their availability might be constrained by many complex factors. A shortage of these energy-critical elements (ECEs) could significantly inhibit the adoption of otherwise game-changing energy technologies. This, in turn, would limit the competitiveness of U.S. industries and the domestic scientific enterprise and, eventually, diminish the quality of life in the United States.”
According to the APS and MRS report several factors can contribute to limiting the domestic availability of an ECE:
The element may not be abundant in the earth’s crust or might not be concentrated by geological processes
An element might only occur in a few economic deposits worldwide, production might be dominated by and, therefore, subject to manipulation by one or more countries â the United States already relies on other countries for more than 90% of most of the ECEs identified in the report
Many ECEs have, up to this point, been produced in relatively small quantities as by-products of primary metals mining and refining. Joint production complicates attempts to ramp up output by a large factor.
Because they are relatively scarce, extraction of ECEs often involves processing large amounts of material, sometimes in ways that do unacceptable environmental damage
The time required for production and utilization to adapt to fluctuations in price and availability of ECEs is long, making planning and investment difficult
This report was limited to elements that have the potential for major impact on energy systems and for which a significantly increased demand might strain supply, causing price increases or unavailability, thereby discouraging the use of some new technologies.
The focus of the report was on energy technologies with the potential for large-scale deployment so the elements they listed are energy critical:
- Gallium, germanium, indium, selenium, silver, and tellurium employed in advanced photovoltaic solar cells, especially thin film photovoltaics.
- Dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium and cobalt used in high-strength permanent magnets for many energy related applications, such as wind turbines and hybrid automobiles.
- Gadolinium (most REEs made this list) for its unusual paramagnetic qualities and europium and terbium for their role in managing the color of fluorescent lighting. Yttrium, another REE, is an important ingredient in energy-efficient solid-state lighting.
- Lithium and lanthanum, used in high performance batteries.
- Helium, required in cryogenics, energy research, advanced nuclear reactor designs, and manufacturing in the energy sector.
- Platinum, palladium, and other PGEs, used as catalysts in fuel cells that may find wide applications in transportation. Cerium, a REE, is also used as an auto-emissions catalyst.
- Rhenium, used in high performance alloys for advanced turbines.
The third report I looked at, “Critical Raw Materials for the EU” listed 14 raw materials which are deemed critical to the European Union (EU): antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium, platinum group metals, rare earths, tantalum and tungsten.
Raw materials are an essential part of both high tech products and every-day consumer products, such as mobile phones, thin layer photovoltaics, Lithium-ion batteries, fibre optic cable, synthetic fuels, among others. But their availability is increasingly under pressure according to a report published today by an expert group chaired by the European Commission. In this first ever overview on the state of access to raw materials in the EU, the experts label a selection of 14 raw materials as “critical” out of 41 minerals and metals analyzed. The growing demand for raw materials is driven by the growth of developing economies and new emerging technologies.
For the critical raw materials, their high supply risk is mainly due to the fact that a high share of the worldwide production mainly comes from a handful of countries, for example:
China: Rare Earths Elements (REE)
Russia, South Africa: Platinum Group Elements (PGE)
Democratic Republic of Congo: Cobalt
All four of the following critical materials appear on each list:
- Rare Earth Elements (REE)
- Cobalt
- Platinum Group Elements (PGE)
- Lithium
The key issues in regards to critical metals are:
- Finite resources
- Chinese market dominance in many sectors
- Long lead times for mine development
- Resource nationalism/country risk
- High project development cost
- Relentless demand for high tech consumer products
- Ongoing material use research
- Low substitutability
- Environmental crackdowns
- Low recycling rates
- Lack of intellectual knowledge and operational expertise in the west
Certainly the rare earth elements, the platinum group of elements and lithium are going to continue receiving investor attention, they are absolutely vital to the continuance of our modern lifestyle. But there are two metals increasingly on my radar screen, one is on all three above critical metals lists and the other soon will be when/if production increases, and in this authors opinion, that’s very possible.
Cobalt
A critical or strategic material is a commodity whose lack of availability during a national emergency would seriously affect the economic, industrial, and defensive capability of a country.
The French Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minires rates high tech metals as critical, or not, based on three criteria:
- Possibility (or not) of substitution
- Irreplaceable functionality
- Potential supply risks
Many countries classify cobalt as a critical or a strategic metal.
The US is the world’s largest consumer of cobalt and the US also considers cobalt a strategic metal. The US has no domestic production, the United States is 100% dependent on imports for its supply of primary cobalt, currently about 15% of U.S. cobalt consumption is from recycled scrap, resulting in a net import reliance of 85%.
Although cobalt is one of the 30 most abundant elements within the earthâs crust itâs low concentration (.002%) means itâs usually produced as a by-product â cobalt is mainly obtained as a by-product of copper and nickel mining activities.
Scandium
Scandium is a soft, light metal that might have applications in the aerospace industry. With a cost approaching $300 per gram scandium is too expensive for widespread use. Scandium is a byproduct from the extraction of other elements, uranium mining, nickel and cobalt laterite mines and is sold as scandium oxide.
The absence of reliable, secure, stable and long term production has limited commercial applications of scandium in most countries. This is despite a comprehensive body of research and a large number of patents which identify significant benefits for the use of scandium over other elements.
Particularly promising are the properties of :
- Stabilizing zirconia: Scandia stabilized zirconia has a growing market demand for use as a high efficiency electrolyte in solid oxide fuel cells
- Scandium-aluminum alloys will be important in the manufacture of fuel cells
- Strengthening aluminum alloys (0.5% scandium) that could replace entire fleets with much cheaper, lighter and stronger aircraft
- Alloys of scandium and aluminum are used in some kinds of athletic equipment, such as aluminum baseball bats, bicycle frames and lacrosse sticks
- Scandium iodide (ScI3) is added to mercury vapor lamps so that they will emit light that closely resembles sunlight
Conclusion
The REEs, PGEs, Lithium and Cobalt are all truly critical to the functioning of our modern society. It’s easy to see why they are classified as critical or strategic. Scandium will increasingly find its way into our everyday lives and undoubtedly take its place on the various critical metal lists.
Access to raw materials at competitive prices has become essential to the functioning of all industrialized economies. Cobalt is one of those raw materials, so too will be Scandium.
Are these two critical metals on your radar screen?
If not, maybe they should be.
Richard Mills - Ahead of the Herd | July 14, 2011
China Will Continue to Dominate the Rare Earths Market in 2011
Editor’s Note: Prices for many precious and base metals hit record highs in 2010, as economic uncertainty rattled around the globe. What does 2011 hold for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, copper and other metals? Kitco News reporters have prepared a series of stories which examine what is in store for 2011, not only for metals but for currencies, stocks and the overall economy. These stories will be posted on Kitco.com during the holiday period and also will be featured in a special section. Stay tuned for video highlights as well.
(Kitco News) - China’s dominance of global rare earths output will continue in 2011, yet at the same time other nations are starting to make preparations to pull more metal from the ground and reduce China’s stranglehold on the market in future years.
Until the last few months, the mention of rare earth metals likely would elicit a blank stare unless the conversation involved someone in a specific sector that uses the elements.
Rare earth metals, known as REEs, burst into the mainstream media limelight during the past several months, with articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, on major wire services and televised segments on CNBC. The big exposure came with a flap that developed when China, which controls 95% to 97% of the current REE global output, stopped exporting to the Japanese.
Fears continue over the supply of rare earth metals, which consist of 17 elements used in creating a variety of consumer, environmental and industrial-driven technological products. Despite some movement expected in 2011 and beyond to develop greater supply from other global sources, the Chinese still hold the shovel.
“They have the ability to dictate the market if they want to,” said Charl Malan, senior metals and mining analyst at Van Eck Global. The company offers a number of metals-related investments and this fall started the first U.S.-listed exchange-traded fund for equities of companies involved with producing, refining and recycling rare earth/strategic metals.
“With rare earths growth in the next five years about 225,000 tons, that’s about 9% (year-on-year) growth number,” Malan said. “Currently, supply is about 125,000 tons, out of which China produces about 120,000 tons.”
Major importers have come to depend on China due to its ability to manufacture REEs at a reasonable cost. The embargo China placed on exports to Japan has been devastating to the Japanese and shows the strength of the REE demand China commands. Japan was the leading importer of REEs.
“News out of China is a big part of it,” said The Mercenary Geologist Mickey Fulp. “It is a purely speculative sector. As news comes out of China about export quotas, relaxing export quotas or news of any kind on that regard supply and demand fundamentals of the rare earth elements sector is going to affect prices.”
Fulp said China controls well over 90% of the current supply. The dominance is mainly because the Chinese have developed the ability to manufacture these minerals in such a way that the rest of the world could be falling behind quickly, not because rare earth metals are really that rare.
“For me, if I look at the bigger picture for rare earths, this is what’s essential,” Malan of Van Eck said. “There’s an abundance of rare earths around the world. It’s not so much the mining, it’s the fact we don’t have the manufacturing capacity and we don’t have the skill sets or the equipment. That’s my biggest concern.”
Malan believes that China has invested its resources in such a way that it is now properly positioned for the future in terms of manufacturing capacity, but more importantly, well placed from a knowledge standpoint.
“To have the refined product really work, you obviously need very highly educated, highly skilled people specifically within an industry,” Malan said. “There’s something like 800 people with Ph.D.s specifically linked to rare earths. They don’t just focus on the equipment, the processing and the manufacturing side of it but also the manpower and the knowledge base behind it.”
A half century ago China was not among the leading producers of REEs. Between 1950 and 1980, the U.S., India, South Africa and Brazil were considered to be the front-runners in production. During the 1980s, China began underselling competitors, leading to consumers purchasing cheap supply from the Chinese.
This had a negative effect on REE mines in several countries, leading to most being shut down. Molycorp Minerals mine in California was once the largest REE producer in the world but was forced to close in 2002. The mine is set to reopen in 2011 and should begin contributing production by 2012.
“In 2012, there will be additional supply from Molycorp which will be 20,000 (metric) tons,” said Marino G. Pieterse, publisher and editor of Gold Letter International, Uranium Letter International and Rare Earths Elements International.
Molycorp is not the only rare earths company beginning REE production in the next few years.
“In 2013 you’ll have three other companies that will begin producing REEs,” Pieterse said. “Frontier Rare Earths will produce 10-20,000 (metric) tons, Greenland Minerals and Earths LTD will have 40,000 (metric) tons and then there’s Rare Elements Resources LTD, which will have 20,000 (metric) tons.”
Lynas Corporation in Australia is also slated to begin REE production, with tonnage reaching over 20,000.
Analysts said that the move towards wider production could mean there will be an over-supply of REEs by 2014-2015, which will bring stability to prices.
Despite the title of being rare, REEs are in abundance. With countries other than China developing the means to manufacture these metals coupled with the need to introduce and maintain greener technologies, REEs are expected to perform well in the coming years.
“I see bigger and better things for the entire sector,” Fulp said.
——
Scandium
Aluminum alloy: aerospace
Yttrium
Phosphors, ceramics, lasers
Lanthanum
Re-chargeable batteries
Cerium
Batteries, catalysts, glass polishing
Praseodymium
Magnets, glass colorant
Neodymium
Magnets, lasers, glass
Promethium
Nuclear batteries
Samarium
Magnets, lasers, lighting
Europium
TV color phosphors: red
Gadolinium
Superconductors, magnets
Terbium
Phosphors: green, fluorescent lights
Dysprosium
Magnets, lasers
Holmium
Lasers
Erbium
Lasers, vanadium steel
Thulium
X-ray source, ceramics
Yterrbium
Infrared lasers, high reactive glass
Lutetium
Catalyst, PET scanners
Tellurium Nerds Gold
Tellurium, used in both photovoltaic and thermoelectric technologies, has become a recent topic of debate in cleantech and materials science because of its rarity. With massive recent commodity price increases in rare earths and precious metals, I attempt to make some sense of the tellurium demand picture and whether we might expect a similar rush for the inconspicuous chalcogen element.
History
Tellurium (Te) is an element, number 52 on the periodic table, whose rarity on earth rivals only that of a handful of other elements, including gold. It is the namesake of the Telluride Film Festival and Telluride, Colorado, a mining town where gold telluride was thought to be found in the late 1800s.
The chart above shows the natural abundance of elements on Earth. For all practical purposes, this picture is static: it is the result only of world-formative events like the big bang and major asteroid impacts (despite any attempt at alchemy, black magic old or particle accelerator new). The fact that gold and tellurium have similar abundances on earth is merely a coincidence, but they are nonetheless found together in alloys of tellurium, or tellurides. Tellurides like calaverite were initially foolishly discarded during the first gold rush of 1849 and the subsequent discovery of gold in them spawned a second gold rush a few years later. Mining and metallurgy, an often high-tech profession at the time, was probably the only field that had tellurium in its vernacular.
Unlike tellurium, gold is the element of basilicas and twenty twos not because of its rarity, but because of its (anti) corrosive properties. Technically speaking, gold’s chemical reduction potential is positive, meaning it requires extra energy to become oxidized and therefore it never loses its luster while adorning our teeth and bathroom door handles. Tellurium, on the other hand, was not blessed with the pretty gene. Its current spot price on metals markets (~$200/kg, 200x cheaper than gold) reflects this.
Any engineer will tell you that looks aren’t everything. Tellurium, in the throws of its own fifteen minutes, has the potential to become similarly priced in the long term due to its increasing use in the highest tech applications. Tellurium has a rich history, if anything, having played a role in every stage of mining and materials science since 1849. During the space race, mining and metallurgy eventually became materials science, an interdisciplinary field of science and engineering incorporating physics and chemistry. With the discovery/invention of quantum mechanics in the 1910s and 20s, solid state physics was born and so was the modern notion of a semiconductor material. It would be thirty years before a semiconductor was applied to computation through microchips, and it would be silicon that proved ideal for this application. Initially, however, an alloy of tellurium, bismuth telluride, was the star of the solid state physics community for its fantastic Peltier, or thermoelectric, properties. A Soviet physicist who published much of the seminal work on solid state physics named Abram Ioffe believed that the commercial application of semiconductors would come in refrigeration through something known as the Peltier effect. The Peltier effect is when a semiconductor material pumps heat when electricity is made to flow through it. Any material that does this efficiently is called a thermoelectric.
Clearly, bismuth telluride and thermoelectric technology lost to the common compressor refrigerator, but one can nonetheless find these semiconductor coolers in a few places. If you have a quiet wine fridge in your living room, a climate controlled seat that cools you down in your Ford F150, or night vision goggles, then you’ll find a Peltier cooler inside.
Today tellurium is seeing its first real growth in use in a different application: solar cells. First Solar (FSLR), darling of all solar startups, uses a thin-film of cadmium telluride (CdTe, or cad-tell) as one of the functional layers in its cells that helps collect sunlight. The company is increasing production quickly. Raw cadmium and tellurium demand is increasing and alas, tellurium could finally have its day. The question is whether Te, currently priced at ~$200/kg on the spot market and with the same supply constraints as gold, will ever have the type of demand that has gold currently trading two hundred times higher at ~$40,000/kg.
Production
Tellurium supply has historically never been much of a concern to anyone. Today tellurium is produced from the refining of copper in the same way gold is produced, as the byproduct of an electrolytic refining process that manifests itself in nasty resultant anode sludges. Tellurium is produced primarily by a Canadian company named 5N Plus which extracts it from these sludges. According to the US Geological Survey, 200 metric tonnes of tellurium were mined in 2009 worldwide and the world can sustain 1,600 metric tonnes of production per year maximum (but these estimations are hard to make accurately see Jack Lifton’s piece on tellurium supply here). In comparison, there were about 2,500 tonnes of gold mined in 2009, and 165,000 tonnes of gold have been mined, ever. Gold production peaked in 1999 at 2,600 tonnes. Let’s assume that tellurium could be produced at similar levels to gold going forward.
Gold demand currently comes from three areas: jewelry (~2,750 tonnes/year), reserve assets (~350 tonnes/year), and the electronics industry (~350 tonnes/year). Adding this up we get 3,450 tonnes/year demand, well over the amount produced. The difference is made up from both recycling of jewelry and the selling of reserve assets.
Gold, however, as an element that is also tied to the world economy through federal reserves and currencies, is not truly a commodity because its price is not generally close to its marginal cost of production. For that reason, let’s consider an element that might be slightly more similar to gold (Au) in that sense: platinum (Pt) or palladium (Pd). Both of these elements currently trade at $60,000/kg and $25,000/kg, respectively. The order of magnitude of these spot prices are the same as that of gold’s; while these elements tend to follow gold and are therefore somewhat subject to price swings that may not be concomitant with economic fundamentals, tellurium’s price can still be expected to rise significantly, albeit perhaps not quite by 200x, if demand for it was also >2,000 tonnes/year.
So how could tellurium demand increase by a factor of ten? Should First Solar be worried? Should producers of bismuth telluride thermoelectric devices be worried?
Tellurium Demand
First, let’s examine how much tellurium First Solar uses, and what this costs as a fraction of their total cost to produce a CdTe photovoltaic cell.
The density of CdTe is 5.8 g/cc. This gives 3.08 g/cc of Te in CdTe.
The efficiency of FSLR’s modules is ~11%. At a solar irradiance of ~1100 W/m^2, their cells will have a maximum power density of ~121 W/m^2.
At a CdTe film thickness of 3 µm, and at a 2.7 GW target production in 2012, they will be using roughly 71 m^3 of tellurium per year in the cells alone.
This would mean using 218 metric tonnes of tellurium per year in their cells. As described earlier, global production is currently estimated at 200 metric tonnes/year and could go as high as 2,500 if we do a straight comparison to gold.
This means FSLR would have to be producing somewhere near 27 GW per year of solar panels to ever be truly supply constrained by tellurium. Considering 20 GW of new power plants were built in the US in 2009, and that 550 GW of new capacity is expected to be installed in China between 2010 and 2020, 27 GW of PV production per year is somewhat plausible many years out and by no means likely.
To understand whether First Solar is shielded from volatility in the price of tellurium, let’s look at what the cost of tellurium is within their cells. From our analysis above it takes 80 metric tonnes of tellurium to manufacture a gigawatt of cell, assuming FSLR’s CdTe deposition is 100% efficient in that no tellurium is wasted or lost (not the case, but we’ll stick with this assumption). At $200/kg, 80 metric tonnes costs $16 million, or 1.6¢/Watt. At an overall production cost of $1.00/Watt, the price of tellurium would have to increase by at least 10x before FSLR would feel significant pain. It is safe to say that they are not going to affect the tellurium market nor be sensitive to much volatility in it with business as usual.
Now let’s look at thermoelectrics and their application for something converse to refrigeration: power generation. Bismuth telluride and a similar alloy, lead telluride, have been studied for a long time for their ability to generate electricity from an applied temperature gradient such as a waste heat source. The automotive industry, in particular, has big plans to incorporate thermoelectric waste heat recovery technology into engine tailpipes to turn wasted heat in exhaust back into electricity. These systems require roughly 1 kg of bismuth or lead telluride per car typically, roughly half of which is tellurium.
Will adoption of automotive thermoelectric generators cause a tellurium shortage? About 60 million motor vehicles were produced in 2009, only a tiny fraction of them not with an internal combustion engine. If each had a thermoelectric generator on them with 0.5 kg of tellurium within, over 30,000 metric tonnes of tellurium would be required per year over 10x more production than what is thought to be possible, and over 100x more than what is currently produced annually. Modestly, if only 7 million cars per year had thermoelectric generators (all of GM’s and BMW’s autos, for instance) we would expect tellurium demand to be 3,500 metric tonnes/year. Even if we assume this tellurium usage could come down by a factor of ten through going to more power dense configurations and by using thin film materials, the long term picture is still bleak. Surely a problem for anyone expecting to scale this technology and for FSLR for that matter! (Note FSLR’s relationship with the largest tellurium supplier 5N Plus.)
More importantly, however, is that it currently costs $100 for just the tellurium in an automotive thermoelectric waste heat recovery generator, and these systems typically produce no more than 500 W of power. In the low margin automotive industry, $0.20/Watt will never cut it; the question of whether the automotive industry will ever impose a tellurium shortage practically moot.
Gold, platinum, palladium, and rare earth elements have all seen their values skyrocket in recent months. While there is nothing immediately suggesting tellurium will follow suit, it will surely be an interesting metal to follow over the next decade â and an analysis like this hopefully helps guide technologists away from the use of telluride materials in all but the niche-est of applications.
Matthew L. Scullin is CEO of Alphabet Energy, Inc., a producer of thermoelectric materials that use no tellurium. This article was previously published on his Scullin blog.
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