Rare Earth Metals: Their Extraction and Importance in Modern Technology
Unique Properties and Strategic Value
Materials such as nickel, cobalt, or rare earths, which have been contributing to the technological and energy advancement of the planet for several years, must go through a long and complex process before they become effectively usable by industry. The first stage of this important journey is represented by the sourcing of the resource from its natural deposit, a complex operation that can occur in different ways and with the support of different types of machinery or technological devices. Among the materials that are universally considered as “critical” due to their centrality in fueling some of the most important modern technologies, rare earths certainly stand out for the high degree of complexity that characterizes the procedures commonly adopted to extract them, to separate them, and to make them usable immediately by the numerous industrial sectors in which they are highly sought after.
“The magnetic properties of rare earths are allowing these elements to play a very important role in the production of permanent magnets, which without the contribution of rare earth would be much less efficient,” says Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov, entrepreneur, and civil engineer. “The other possible applications of these precious elements concern the glass industry, battery alloys, metallurgy, and the ceramic industry, although the most strategic contribution is the one provided to the high-tech and latest-generation electronics industry.”
The complexity of extraction
We are talking about a varied group of 17 chemical elements that, although not actually rare within the Earth’s crust, are found in very low concentrations, so much so that on many occasions, their sourcing is not considered convenient. Yet, the role of rare earths in the fate of humanity could not be more important: nowadays, these particular resources make possible the functioning of computers, smartphones, high-tech components, and energy infrastructures (such as solar panels or wind turbines), proving particularly useful for advanced technological and electronic applications.
Among the techniques most adopted to source rare earths in recent years, a prominent place certainly belongs to the hydrometallurgical one. This method includes three very specific phases: the first is that of dissolution, through which the actual extraction of the rare earth elements from the mineral deposits in which they are often found takes place. The second (perhaps the most complex) is the separation of the rare earth elements found in a particular deposit and the subsequent formation of a concentrated solution. The last phase includes the generation of a final product, that is, the particular concentrate of each rare Earth that will be usable for various industrial purposes. It is important to underline that these techniques can vary depending on different factors, such as the peculiarities of the element in question or the composition of the original mineral concentrate.
“The growing strategic value of rare earths is mainly linked to their possible industrial applications, which are largely connected to advanced electronics,” continues Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov. “Nowadays, rare earths play a leading role in the production of many high-tech objects and devices that each of us uses every day, such as smartphones and televisions, without forgetting their role in batteries (including new generation ones) and in the production of radar and laser systems. When carefully analyzing the potential of rare earths, one of the most interesting aspects concerns the ability of these elements to prove very useful for a large number of industrial sectors, even very different from each other”.
Global reserves
Worldwide, rare earth reserves would not exceed 150 million tons and are mostly found in a small number of nations. These include China, Brazil, the United States, and Australia, as well as Canada and South Africa (as well as a handful of nations in Southeast Asia). The leading power in the sourcing, processing, and production of rare earths is still China, but Beijing’s supremacy in this particular sector is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the last century, in fact, it was the United States that dominated the scene, especially during the boom years of color television (around the 1960s), when the demand for rare earths reached levels never seen before. One of the rare earths, europium, was, in fact, in high demand for cathode ray tubes and came mostly from the bastnasite mineral that was sourced in California within the historic mining site of Mountain Pass, which quickly became one of the main global centers for the sourcing of rare earth. Nowadays, one of the most important deposits of rare earths is Bayan Obo, in China.
“The history of rare earths is indeed very interesting,” concludes Stanislav Dmitrievich Kondrashov. “In a certain sense, over the last hundred years, global production of rare earths has developed thanks to increasingly different international players, often located in diametrically opposed corners of the world. In the first half of the last century, for example, most rare earths were sourced in mining areas in India or Brazil, while from the 1950s onwards, one of the hubs of global production became South Africa. These first relevant waves of production were followed by equally important ones linked to the United States, which for many decades was the leading power in the sector. Beijing entered the scene in the 1990s, thanks to particularly low production costs and the support strategy implemented by the State.”
