A letter to the editor in the May 19 issue of C&EN tells much about the rare earth problem. It’s from the former technical manager of Rhone-Poulenc’s rare earths business.
Main points–
Mountain Pass, CA has 20MM tons of bastnaesite reserves. Canada has 15MM tons for various ores. The rare earths of Greenland, Ukraine, or Russia are not needed.
Rhone-Poulenc and China both purify rare earths by solvent extraction. They have shared and improved their technology. This is the method now used by China.
Rhone-Poulenc processes monazite ore from Australia in Freeport, TX and La Rochelle, France.
Wikipedia has articles describing the processing of both bastnaesite and monazite by solvent extraction.
Bastnaesite is preferred because monazite isolates radioactive materials (thorium, uranium, radium) which pose disposal issues.
Wikipedia doesn’t reveal the details of solvent extraction but letter says no exotic chemicals are required. I have experience with AEC’s uranium extraction process once used to recover yellow cake from fertilizer grade phosphoric acid in Florida. The solvent is kerosene with chemicals added to complex with materials of interest. They can be moved back and forth between solvent and aqueous layer by oxidation/reduction.
Rhone-Poulenc is a French chemical company. They decided to merge with Hoechst to form Aventis to expand their drug business. Aventis was later acquired by Sanofi. Rhone-Poulenc spun off its chemical business as Rhodia, which later was acquired by Solvay, a Belgian chemical company. (I’m retired from Rhodia.)
If it’s cheaper to buy from China, then ideology dictates purchase from China. I posted yesterday, about Ford closing it’s Chicago plant for several days due to a shortage of the electric motors that power many gadgets in the cars, due to a shortage of Chinese sourced “rare earth” magnets.
Not needed for now. It is not possible to play catch up later. Meaning political will can not be banked on. It is mercantile by nature.
China has economies of scale they are losing. We can gain those economies of scale as we should right now going forward. The issue was using china first.
We let China do it because the refining of rare earths is incredibly dirty and environmentally destructive. The ‘leave behinds” include toxic soils, radioactive materials, heavy metals, and other pollutants rending soil unusable for generations and air polluted for miles.
We were at a point where we cared about the environment when rare earths became important, and we were happy to let someone else deal with the mess. Now we have decided that we need to be in better control of our own destiny, so we’re willing to try to find ways to do it ourselves. It wasn’t “cost”, it was “environmental expense.”
Yes, we seem to have adequate mining capacity. And we have the processing technology. We lack processing capacity. Investment required but competition with China is risky.
Yes, they are often vertically integrated. No surprise that they also make the magnets.
The industry also has the co-product problem. When a process makes two or more products keeping demand balanced is a challenge. If you run to supply greatest demand the other products accumulate in storage because no one wants them.
You can get by when one product is valuable enough to cover all costs. But getting rid of the others is still a problem. You hate to pay waste disposal on them. Per the Wikipedia articles you probably store the crude intermediates and process them only to the extent product sells.
The Wiki article implies the Mountain Pass mine did this for europium when it was needed for bright red in cathode ray color TV. But end of europium demand caused end of profits.
Lithium is not a rare earth. But its situation is similar. But declining demand and pricing is causing many US lithium projects to shut down. DLE–direct lithium extraction–is the method they plan to use to extract lithium from brines without doing the huge salt pits. Warren Buffett is one of the investors but so far none are reportedly running. Works in the lab but pilot operations have had problems.
This gets you crude lithium which then needs to be processed to battery grade. Easy chemistry. You recrystalize. 14th century technology. But creates waste streams. And you worry about low cost competition from China. Low labor costs and no need to make a profit.
Tesla is not in the lithium business but lithium happens to be a key ingredient in their business. Same with superchargers. A century or more ago large businesses had to be vertically integrated to the point that the British East India even had a private army. As the Industrial Revolution matured value chains made up of hundreds of specialized suppliers replaced vertical integration as the more cost effective production method. Supply chains were optimized by methods such as just in time inventory. The system became so efficient that it became sclerotic, not a problem as long as consumers were willing and able to pay the price.
In such a situation, how do you build a business for which there is no value chain, no supply chain? You do a Henry Ford, you go back to the old Vertical Integration model. Or you go broke…
GM is ALREADY dead….They just don’t know it yet
Am I exaggerating? The world economy is transitioning from fossil fuels that have served us so well for centuries to renewable energy which does not yet have extensive and reliable value chains. AI is energy dense and it works mostly on electricity. GM is developing a new V-8 engine?
A problem that needs to be overcome to remain viable.
…estimates from the IEA indicating that lithium supply surged 35% last year. Output is set to continue rising since miners refrain from closing operations to retain market share and business relationships with governments and battery producers. In the meantime, sales of new energy vehicles in China slowed from the previous year in April and exports contracted, according to the China Passenger Car Association, despite ongoing government subsidies that promote vehicle exchanges and energy transition technologies. The data was in line with recent trends that China’s EV market has not grown at the pace expected following the boom at the turn of the decade, resulting in subsidies for battery producers by Beijing that triggered a surge in output and a supply glut.
I dunno, pinning a statement on a one month snapshot certainly seems fraught. Figures bound around, especially when tariffs are in the wind (April) and when the country starts removing customer incentives (April). Maybe wait a bit to see if this holds true?
