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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?
China is in territorial dispute with every SE-Asian country that has a shoreline. They claim sovereignty over every island down to the Philippines. For example, they have claims over Paracel islands which in theory, belong to Vietnam. Recently they started to harass fishing boats, hold them at ransom, very similar to what Somalian pirates do. Vietnam has historical documents to prove their claim - irony is, that actually some of the documents the Chinese produced to prove their point turned out to be validate the Vietnamese claims (they mention these islands as "foreign lands" in their records). Also, they threatened foreign companies (oil exploration) that had contracts with Vietnamese oil companies to back out. Finally - this started this year - they began to organize "tours" to these islands, showing the beauty of these "most remote Chinese lands." In reality, there's nothing to see there actually. Except Vietnamese fishermen who lived there for generations. Well, not anymore, actually, but you get the point ... just trying to illustrate how territorial the Chinese are... and how arrogant.
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.