China’s environmental watchdog tightens control over rare earth projects
BEIJING, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) — The Ministry of Environmental Protection on Thursday announced a list of the first 15 rare earth metal enterprises that have passed the ministry’s environmental protection check.
The enterprises were selected from 84 companies that passed inspections by environmental watchdogs in 14 provincial divisions, said Tao Detian, the ministry’s spokesman.
China currently has more than 300 enterprises working in the rare earth metal industry.
Environmental protection departments across China will not accept environmental impact assessment reports on any new rare earth projects unless they are submitted by enterprises that are on the list, Tao said.
Without an environmental impact assessment report, no industrial projects can be legally approved in China.
In April, the ministry started a nationwide inspection of rare earth enterprises, evaluating their environmental impact, pollution control measures and efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
According to the inspection, rare earth enterprises have typically not performed well in controlling pollution and protecting local environments, Tao said.
The ministry found that several enterprises did not submit environmental impact assessment reports, while others did not properly dispose of dangerous industrial waste, he said. Mining enterprises, in particular, have caused serious damage to local ecology, Tao said.
Enterprises that have failed the inspection have been urged to change their practices, while those that have seriously violated environmental laws will have their operations suspended and be forced to pay fines, Tao said.
The inspection will be expanded to highly-polluting industries such as steel production, leathermaking, lead-acid battery manufacturing, citric acid production and ethyl alcohol production, he said.
By: Xiong Tong
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-11/24/c_131267958.htm
China’s Rare-Earth Domination Keeps Wind Industry On Its Toes
Wind turbine manufacturers are scrambling to find alternatives to a key element used in direct-drive permanent magnet generators (PMGs), thanks to skyrocketing prices and diminishing supplies of crucial rare earths.
China currently provides 94% of the world’s rare earths, including neodymium and dysprosium, which are used in the magnets for direct-drive wind turbine motors. However, the Chinese government has put new restrictions on rare-earth mining that have resulted in lower supply levels, according to a report from research firm Roskill Information Services (RIS).
For instance, this year, the Chinese government issued new regulations requiring all companies that mine rare earths to show they have mandatory production plans, appropriate planning permission, environmental certification and safety licenses.
But it was last year’s tightening of China’s export quota that really impacted the rare-earth market. Between May 2010 and August 2011, Chinese internal prices for neodymium increased eightfold - a reflection of the shortage of rare earths for magnets within China, RIS notes.
China has also ramped up its export taxes on rare earths, causing a shortage in the rest of the world.
As a result, only 25% of the world’s rare-earth supply will come from China by 2015, as demand for the neodymium and dysprosium necessary for the manufacture of magnets for wind turbines will climb at a pace of 7% to 9% per year through 2015, according to RIS’ research.
This growth in demand could result in a supply deficit within that time frame, causing wind turbine manufacturers to rush to find alternatives to PMGs.
Searching for other options
Some companies that rely on PMGs for their wind turbines have already taken steps to avoid the problem.
In September, PMG manufacturer Boulder Wind Power engaged Molycorp - which claims to be the only U.S. supplier of rare earths, and the largest provider outside of China - to be its preferred supplier of rare earths and/or alloys for wind turbine generators.
In addition to avoiding the trade conflicts and price volatility associated with China by using a U.S.-based supplier, the company also uses permanent magnets that do not require dysprosium, a very scarce rare earth.
“By effectively solving the dysprosium supply problem for the wind turbine industry, this technology removes a major hurdle to the expansion of permanent magnet generator wind turbines across global markets,” says Mark A. Smith, Molycorp’s president and CEO.
Direct-drive wind turbine manufacturer Goldwind has taken a similar approach.
“As a result of early price increases, Goldwind began developing efficiencies and alternatives that reduce the amount of rare-earth materials required to manufacture our magnets, which, in turn, mitigates our exposure to future price fluctuations,” Colin Mahoney, spokesperson for Goldwind USA, tells NAW. “This is a scenario that we have long considered.”
Despite RIS’ somewhat negative forecast, some say the worst is over. Because companies are looking to U.S. rare-earth suppliers, such as Molycorp, instead of to China - as well as coming up with alternatives that do not involve rare earths - there is some indication that prices may come down.
In fact, a recent New York Times article claims prices have dropped significantly since August.
Goldwind’s Mahoney agrees with that assessment.
“While the price of rare-earth materials have fluctuated over the past several years, more recent trends have included a dramatic drop in the neodymium market,” he says.
Still, it is uncertain how long these prices can be maintained, as demand for rare earths is expected to soar by 2015, the RIS report notes.
By: Laura DiMugno
Source: http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.8925
Thirteen Exotic Elements We can’t Live Without
From indium touchscreens to hafnium-equipped moonships, the nether regions of the periodic table underpin modern technology, but supplies are getting scarce
AS YOU flick the light switch in your study, an eerie europium glow illuminates your tablet computer, idling on the desk. You unlock it, casually sweeping your finger across its indium-laced touchscreen. Within seconds, pulses of information are pinging along the erbium-paved highways of the internet. Some music to accompany your surfing? No sooner thought than the Beach Boys are wafting through the neodymium magnets of your state-of-the-art headphones.
For many of us, such a scene is mundane reality. We rarely stop to think of the advances in materials that underlie our material advances. Yet almost all our personal gadgets and technological innovations have something in common: they rely on some extremely unfamiliar materials from the nether reaches of the periodic table. Even if you have never heard of the likes of hafnium, erbium or tantalum, chances are there is some not too far from where you are sitting.
You could soon be hearing much more about them, too. Demand for many of these unsung elements is soaring, so much so that it could soon outstrip supply. That’s partly down to our insatiable hunger for the latest gadgetry, but increasingly it is also being driven by the green-energy revolution. For every headphone or computer hard-drive that depends on the magnetic properties of neodymium or dysprosium, a wind turbine or motor for an electric car demands even more of the stuff. Similarly, the properties that make indium indispensable for every touchscreen make it a leading light in the next generation of solar cells.
All that means we are heading for a crunch. In its Critical Materials Strategy, published in December last year, the US Department of Energy (DoE) assessed 14 elements of specific importance to clean-energy technologies. It identified six at “critical” risk of supply disruption within the next five years: indium, and five “rare earth” elements, europium, neodymium, terbium, yttrium and dysprosium. It rates a further three - cerium, lanthanum and tellurium - as “near-critical”.
What’s the fuss?
It’s not that these elements aren’t there: by and large they make up a few parts per billion of Earth’s crust. “We just don’t know where they are,” says Murray Hitzman, an economic geologist at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Traditionally, these elements just haven’t been worth that much to us. Such supplies are often isolated as by-products during the mining of materials already used in vast quantities, such as aluminium, zinc and copper. Copper mining, for example, has given us more than enough tellurium, a key component of next-generation solar cells, to cover our present needs - and made it artificially cheap.
“People who are dealing with these new technologies look at the price of tellurium, say, and think, well, this isn’t so expensive so what’s the fuss?” says Robert Jaffe, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He chaired a joint committee of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society on “Energy Critical Elements” that reported in February this year. The problem, as the report makes clear, is that the economics changes radically when demand for these materials outstrips what we can supply just by the by. “Then suddenly you have to think about mining these elements directly, as primary ores,” says Jaffe. That raises the cost dramatically - presuming we even know where to dig.
An element’s price isn’t the only problem. The rare earth group of elements, to which many of the most technologically critical belong, are generally found together in ores that also contain small amounts of radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium. In 1998, chemical processing of these ores was suspended at the only US mine for rare earth elements in Mountain Pass, California, due to environmental concerns associated with these radioactive contaminants. The mine is expected to reopen with improved safeguards later this year, but until then the world is dependent on China for nearly all its rare-earth supplies. Since 2005, China has been placing increasingly stringent limits on exports, citing demand from its own burgeoning manufacturing industries.
That means politicians hoping to wean the west off its ruinous oil dependence are in for a nasty surprise: new and greener technologies are hardly a recipe for self-sufficiency. “There is no country that has sufficient resources of all these minerals to close off trade with the rest of the world,” says Jaffe.
So what can we do? Finding more readily available materials that perform the same technological tricks is unlikely, says Karl Gschneidner, a metallurgist at the DoE’s Ames Laboratory in Iowa. Europium has been used to generate red light in televisions for almost 50 years, he says, while neodymium magnets have been around for 25. “People have been looking ever since day one to replace these things, and nobody’s done it yet.”
Others take heart from the success story of rhenium. This is probably the rarest naturally occurring element, with a concentration of just 0.7 parts per billion in Earth’s crust. Ten years ago, it was the critical ingredient in heat-resistant superalloys for gas-turbine engines in aircraft and industrial power generation. In 2006, the principal manufacturer General Electric spotted a crunch was looming and instigated both a recycling scheme to reclaim the element from old turbines, and a research programme that developed rhenium-reduced and rhenium-free superalloys.
No longer throwing these materials away is one obvious way of propping up supplies. “Tellurium ought to be regarded as more precious than gold - it is; it is rarer,” says Jaffe. Yet in many cases less than 1 per cent of these technologically critical materials ends up being recycled, according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s latest report on metal recycling, published in May.
Even if we were to dramatically improve this record, some basic geological research to find new sources of these elements is crucial - and needed fast. Technological concerns and necessary environmental and social safeguards mean it can take 15 years from the initial discovery of an ore deposit in the developed world to its commercial exploitation, says Hitzman.
Rhenium again shows how quickly the outlook can change. In 2009, miners at a copper mine in Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia, discovered a huge, high-grade rhenium seam geologically unlike anything seen before. “It could saturate the world rhenium market for a number of years - and it was found by accident,” says Hitzman.
In the end, we should thank China for its decision to restrict exports of rare earths, says Jaffe, as it has brought the issue of technologically critical elements to our attention a decade earlier than would otherwise have happened. Even so, weaning ourselves off these exotic substances will be an immense challenge - as our brief survey of some of these unsung yet indispensable elements shows.
Bibliography
US Department of Energy, Critical Materials Strategy
American Physical Society and Materials Research Society, Energy Critical Elements
US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries
by James Mitchell Crow
Precious Metals: Is Tellurium the new Gold?
Gold has been spectacularly popular among investors for the past couple of years.
Silver seems to be this year’s gold.
So, what’s next year’s silver gonna be?
According to Robert Jaffe, a physicist at MIT, tellurium could be a metal investor’s best new play.
“Tellurium ought to be regarded as more precious than gold — it is; it is rarer,” he tells New Scientist magazine.
An article by James Mitchell Crow in the June, 2011 issue of New Scientist, titled “13 Exotic Elements We Can’t Live Without,” points out:
We rarely stop to think of the advances in materials that underlie our material advances. Yet almost all our personal gadgets and technological innovations have something in common: they rely on some extremely unfamiliar materials from the nether reaches of the periodic table. Even if you have never heard of the likes of hafnium, erbium or tantalum, chances are there is some not too far from where you are sitting.
You could soon be hearing much more about them, too. Demand for many of these unsung elements is soaring, so much so that it could soon outstrip supply. That’s partly down to our insatiable hunger for the latest gadgetry, but increasingly it is also being driven by the green-energy revolution. For every headphone or computer hard-drive that depends on the magnetic properties of neodymium or dysprosium, a wind turbine or motor for an electric car demands even more of the stuff. Similarly, the properties that make indium indispensable for every touchscreen make it a leading light in the next generation of solar cells.
All that means we are heading for a crunch. In its Critical Materials Strategy, published in December last year, the US Department of Energy (DoE) assessed 14 elements of specific importance to clean-energy technologies. It identified six at “critical” risk of supply disruption within the next five years: indium, and five “rare earth” elements, europium, neodymium, terbium, yttrium and dysprosium. It rates a further three - cerium, lanthanum and tellurium - as “near-critical”.
Here are the 13 elements necessary for cleantech applications that may be winners in this year’s commodities portfolio:
Neodymium
New Scientist says:
These numerous uses make for a perfect storm threatening future supplies. In its Critical Materials Strategy, which assesses elements crucial for future green-energy technologies, the US Department of Energy estimates that wind turbines and electric cars could make up 40 per cent of neodymium demand in an already overstretched market. Together with increasing demand for the element in personal electronic devices, that makes for a clear “critical” rating.
Erbium
New Scientist says:
Erbium is a crucial ingredient in the optical fibres used to transport light-encoded information around the world. These cables are remarkably good at keeping light bouncing along, easily outperforming a copper cable transporting an electrical signal. Even so, the light signal slowly fades as it racks up the kilometres, making amplification necessary.
Tellurium
New Scientist says:
In 2009, solar cells made from thin films of cadmium telluride became the first to undercut bulky silicon panels in cost per watt of electricity generating capacity.
Because the global market for the element has been minute compared with that for copper - some $100 million against over $100 billion - there has been little incentive to extract it. That will change as demand grows, but better extraction methods are expected to only double the supply, which will be nowhere near enough to cover the predicted demand if the new-style solar cells take off. The US DoE anticipates a supply shortfall by 2025.
Hafnium
Hafnium’s peerless heat resistance has taken it to the moon and back as part of the alloy used in the nozzle of rocket thrusters fitted to the Apollo lunar module. Since 2007, though, it has also been found much closer to home, in the minuscule transistors of powerful computer chips.
That’s because hafnium oxide is a highly effective electrical insulator. Compared with silicon dioxide, which is conventionally used to switch transistors on and off, it is much less likely to let unwanted currents seep through. It also switches 20 per cent faster, allowing more information to pass. This has enabled transistor size to shrink from 65 nanometres with silicon dioxide first to 45 nm and now to 32 nm.
By Justin Rohrlich June 20, 2011
US Rare Earth Public Policy Needs to Move From Studies to Actions
One of my favorite consulting slogans of all time “Analysis Paralysis” aptly captures the state of US public policy on rare earth metals and critical minerals (not to confuse the two). After our story last week on testimony presented to the House Committee on Natural Resources, urging the Committee to take action on a number of bills involving rare earth metals, we heard from Jeff Green, a well-known rare earth and specialty metals lobbyist. Green wanted to share some of his perceptions of current legislation and where he thinks US public policy needs to go to begin addressing some of the strategic supply constraints.
Rare Earth Stockpiling
“A lot of people are misperceiving what is being debated related to a stockpile”, Green said. “The only proposal on the table involves a new version of the RESTART Act (Rare Earths Supply Chain Technology and Resources Transformation (RESTART) Act of 2011) that calls for a 250-ton inventory of rare earth alloy and rare earth magnets.” The concept involves creating a small vendor-managed inventory that could be drawn down in a time of war. The “stockpile” would involve the government essentially buying up capacity from one of the US mining firms, as opposed to actually taking title and inventory. This approach, according to Green, provides critical domestic demand, a key component of re-starting US industry.
An Incremental Approach the RESTART Act
Another approach, one that Green favors, was offered by Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Co.) as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. It requires the DOD to create a Rare Earth Inventory Plan that would explore risk mitigation for those individual elements expected to be in short supply like neodymium and dysprosium.
This plan would be a follow-up to another congressionally mandated report, due to come out this summer, that essentially includes a supply and demand analysis by element for DOD. The Coffman amendment to the FY12 NDAA would require the Defense National Stockpile Center (now renamed Defense Logistics Agency Strategic Materials) to look at the elements in shorter supply and identify how the government plans on securing those elements and downstream value-added products such as metal, alloy and magnets. The amendment would only cover defense applications (not commercial), though the executive branch could take it further, should it so choose, according to Green.
Rather than try broad-brush solutions, Green suggests approving smaller incremental approaches that actually offer solutions. For example, he suggests passage of an initial bill that covers specific rare earth metals as opposed to all or other critical materials such as copper and cobalt that could quickly spin legislative action out of control.
Neodymium, Samarium, Dysprosium, Yttrium, Terbium: Good Places to Start
The “heavies”, as they are commonly referred to, present a different challenge as the US currently does not produce any of these elements.
Moreover, according to the U.S. Magnetic Materials Association (USMMA), the following defense applications remain dependent upon rare earth materials. In particular, precision-guided munitions (requiring samarium-cobalt or neodymium iron boron permanent magnets), neodymium iron boron magnets used in helicopter stealth technology, tanks and other vehicles use rare earth lasers for range finding, military communication satellites and yttria-stabilized zirconia used in “hot” sections of jet engines, according to the USMMA.
The USMMA supports legislation that “emphasizes production” to restart reliable domestic manufacturing for these key materials as well as defense-specific stockpiling for the most critical of the 17 rare earth elements via the Defense Logistics Agency.
At the end of the day, according to Green, US public policy should focus on only two initiatives:
- Define what we are short of
- Determine how we get it
It’s hard to argue with that. But with some estimates of the time needed to rebuild a rare-earth supply chain of 15 years, and a minimum of two years to create magnet facilities for sintered neodymium iron boron permanent magnets, Congress had better start acting soon.
June 7, 2011 By Lisa Reiman
