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Japan Begins Recycling Rare Earth Metals From Electronics
Black Gold Alchemist writes "Dowa, a Japanese mining company in Kosaka, has begun the recycling of rare earth metals from used cellphones and computers. This is in response to a recent, temporary trade embargo from China, which is the leading supplier of rare earth metals needed for production of products including hybrid cars, wind turbines, and LCD screens. Because of the shortage of rare earth metals, Japanese trade minister Akihiro Ohata is asking the government to include a rare earth strategy in its supplementary budget for this year."
should have been doing this ages ago, but yet again, no pressure to do so while supplies were cheap
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Well, this goes to show how much of electronics recycling is a gimmick and publicity stunt.
Separating rare earths out of electronics waste is actually not that difficult: hit it with acid; do some basic purification first to get rid of Fe, Cu and a few other "usual suspects"; after that ion exchange chromatography does the deed. Even without initial mechanical separation there should be enough of them in the acid effluent. The fact that it was not done shows how much are we really "recycling" there.
In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one. This may finally make EU, USA and Japan governments put some money behind the electronic waste disposal laws.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The technology has been around for years. I guess what is new is that the suits no longer see it as a "green" thing but as a necessary supply line.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
like, for example, importing the stuff from mongolia. this may turn out to be the faster and cheaper way out.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704380504575529383600995748.html
The most interesting part of this mini-debacle is how did the idea that there would be a shortage of rare earth elements came about at all, and why did the Chinese believe it, the idea being utter bullshit.
While it is true that China manages to produce these cheaply at the moment, rare earth elements are available basically all over the place in similar proportions.
Using them as a policy-making tool has done no harm to Japan, and potentially a lot of harm to the credibility of China as an economic player, especially to its counterparties in Asia, but also anyone who may have a reason to expect potential future clash of interests.
While the Japanese acted out during the crisis as scared pussies, the Chinese appear to have played the role of the dumber party.
Seeing great Asian powers like Japan and China just learning to dab at foreign relations after 6 decades of American dominance is very interesting.
What this suggests is that there should be a middle ground between dumping stuff in a landfill and recycling it. We should be segregating material that we don't currently recycle or doesn't make economic sense to recycle, but might become scarce in the future. That will make it easier to recycle when we need it.
Sadly this is the way we overcome our big problems. Not by foresight, predictions and educated action. The shit has to start hitting the fan to get people moving in the right direction. I mean this whole rare earth situation has been foreseen. It was obvious that China was building a monopoly years ago. The same thing happens with the coming helium shortage, energy problems, global warming, you name it. It really has to get nasty for people to do something about these things.
In fact, we should say thank you to China on this one.
Recent news reports have Japan accusing China of this being over a territorial dispute. The traders are saying that things have resumed but that this is just an excuse for China to harass traders and outbound exports with "preshipment" checks. China denies this has anything to do with the dispute but the timing is more than a bit suspect and why is this only directed at Japan?
I don't know how much of an net positive environmental impact recycling rare earths from circuitry provides (is your acid economically and environmentally friendly? what are the byproducts? are they less damaging than the circuitry to the environment?) but I don't think it's wise to thank countries for exacerbating a territorial dispute. The world has enough of those now, we don't need another escalation or spat between countries.
My work here is dung.
While this sounds like a good idea, the problem is that segregating and storing all this stuff would be tremendously expensive (the cost of segregating recyclable materials is one of the main reasons why recycling programs have had somewhat of a checkered history). And there's no guarantee that it would ever pay off. So it would be tough to get anyone to invest in something like this.
Both countries have had their governments and government bureaucracies ripped apart and rebuilt basically from scratch post-WWII.
In China, the communists removed KMT, sent Chiang to Taiwan and started from zero. Three times, actually, if you count the Cultural revolution, and the subsequent removal of the Maoist wing by Deng.
Some countries refused to acknowledge the existence of PRC until the 70s, and China started to really perceive itself and try to act as a superpower very recently.
In post-war Japan, the US occupational authority rewrote the constitution, made quite a few changes in the way government was run, engaged in a serious redistribution of wealth via the land reform, etc. US retained full control of the country until 1952, and partial control until 1972.
Some Japanese even say the country still has no independent foreign policy, and indeed it almost seems so at times.
Just last year a party that is quite new to being a government party was elected with a landslide and fresh ideas as to how bureaucracy and foreign relations should work.
It already had one major foreign policy crisis (the clash of sorts with US over an Okinawa base), which was an important reason why the PM stepped down this summer.
Besides, Chinese-Japanese relations weren't all that rich in the past. Japan was a closed society (because of fear from China) until the mid-1800s, and most of the relations they've had with China since then would qualify as "diplomacy" only if you use the von Clausewitz definition thereof.
Let's see how they will do with rare Mars metals :)
As with everything else, reuse is most always better than recycling.
Royalty-free standards should be created for battery shapes and connectors, and a garbage tax should be placed on non-standard batteries.
Interchangeable parts were key to the industrial revolution. Sometimes we forget.