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Searching For Alternatives To China's Rare Earth Monopoly
KantIsDead writes "MIT's Technology Review adds to the ongoing discussion of China's monopoly on rare earth metals, an issue that was temporarily catapulted to national attention during China's rare earth embargo of Japan. The current article focuses on the search for alternatives to rare earth metals that would undercut China's monopoly and allow nations to develop their industry without fearing the hand of a Chinese embargo. From the article: 'In the US, the Chinese dominance of rare-earth mineral production has prompted a surge of funding focused on developing permanent magnets that use less, if any, rare-earth materials, such as nearly $7 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). In one of these projects, University of Nebraska researchers are working to enhance permanent magnets made with an alloy iron and cobalt, or FeCo. This class of materials is sold today, but delivers half or less of the power of the best rare-earth-based magnets. The Nebraska researchers will focus on ways to dope the structural matrix of these alloys with traces of other elements, thereby rearranging their molecular geometry to create stronger, more durable permanent magnetic materials.'"
I suspect there will be folks who open up new markets for rare earths. I believe there are a number of resources that are yet undeveloped on the African continent. Likely the replacement for Conflict Diamonds...Conflict Earths. (Sounds sorta like a scifi novel title, huh?)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Do magnets made of FeCo material smell bad?
There are lots of rare earths in other countries. China is just the cheapest place to extract it. If the price goes up then other deposits will be able to be brought online economically.
I only wonder what lays yet undiscovered in the Antarctic, there is no telling what sort of things can be found there. Though I think treaty prevents any sort of commercial ventures.Though that's just so the Military can establish their secret base there.
How exactly is that working out for China? I mean, the goods are fungible. It doesn't matter who you buy niobium from, just that you get niobium. If China won't sell it to them, someone else will.
Chorus Motors is working with Boeing to put their electric wheel motors in Boeing's new aircraft. They are powered by the plane's APU instead of using the engines.
http://choruscars.com/
Their technology results in a smaller motor with higher torque that does not require an assist from an ICE at higher speeds in an electric vehicle. It also does not use any rare earths.
Molycorp is restarting the rare earths mine in the U.S. but the industry to process the ore will take 15 years to redevelop.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/molycorp-s-ipo-aims-at-chinese-grip-on-smart-bombs.html
"While U.S. deposits also exist in several states such as Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, they are still being explored and could take as many as 15 years before becoming fully operational, according the GAO report."
basement too long? There are minerals! in Afghanistan.
With the oil transit fees Afghanistan will be earning from transporting all that Iraqi oil, the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex will soon be able to get any rare earth element it needs.
Yours In Samarkand,
Kilgore Trout.
You have two way of breaking the chinese monopoly :
1)Impose a polution tax on dirty industry. That allow the local rare earth metal mining company to start again with the incured cost of respecting polution law, while still staying competitive
2) repel polution law and allow local company to polute as much as the chinese. Human resource might still make them more expensive than the chinese though.
3) make up a miracle new technology. Good luck on that one.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A much simpler method would be to just drop China from the WTO and have nations around the world reinstate their trade barriers against their unfairly priced goods on the open market.
But that would be easy.
And direct.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We're seeing the consequences of some old decisions by the Chinese government. So I have a request. Are there any modern Kremlinologists (the name for people who tried to divine the intent and inner workings of the former USSR) who have insight into the current resource strategy of the Chinese government and its origins? Making the deliberate decision to corner the rare earths market is a strategic one that would have required a great deal of effort and discipline, both of advocacy before the ultimate decision was made and communication, planning, and implementation afterward.
I think that would be a interesting window into the decision making process and the sources of power in the Chinese government.
China's on the other side of the planet. If we dig deep enough, we can mine their rare earth.
Molycorp is restarting the rare earths mine in the U.S. but the industry to process the ore will take 15 years to redevelop.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/molycorp-s-ipo-aims-at-chinese-grip-on-smart-bombs.html
"While U.S. deposits also exist in several states such as Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, they are still being explored and could take as many as 15 years before becoming fully operational, according the GAO report."
It's alot easier to get out of industries than it is to get in. I suspect this won't be the last industry we'll want to redevelop. It was foolish to get out of it in the first place. The same can be said for other industries.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
In other words, we (the West) have artifically created this situation by shutting down our own mines with labor and evironmental regulations, while allowing China (with no real enforcement of labor or environmental regulations, even if they are on the books) to dominate the market. I saw a TV spot about this a while back and apparently there was an operating mine in California as recently as 10 years ago, which simply wasn't able to compete with Chinese prices because the California mine had the expense of actually complying with the US environmental regulations. That gives the Chinese an artificial price advantage.
The market for these goods are mostly export markets in Japan, North America, and Europe, so this is in our power to control. To stimulate production in the west, we could do one of two things : 1) eliminate our own self-imposed regulations (perhaps unacceptabe from an environmental point of view) or 2) eliminate the artifical price advantage that the chinese have from not having regulations. I would choose # 2. We need only tax chinese imports and goods with chinese components. For example, say a motor from Japan uses magnets and is being exported to the USA, then the manufacturer would need to demonstrate that the magnet was made from non-chinese metals to be exempt from an import tariff. Once the artifical price advantage of the chinese component is nullfied, the manufacturer would be willing to pay higher prices from other non-chinese mines. Then other mines outside China would arise in the market. As an added side-effect, the Chinese might even begin regulating their own industry to get out from under the tariff.
Here is the part of the article I was quoting:
Although well over 90 percent of the minerals are produced in China, they are found in many places around the world, and, in spite of their name, are actually abundant in the earth's crust (the name is a hold-over from a 19th-century convention). In recent years, low-cost Chinese production and environmental concerns have caused suppliers outside of China to shut down operations.
In 1920 the operators at AT&T striked. This led AT&T to pick up the pace and change it's entire network over to switches and the rotary phone. AT&T had resisted this prior to it realizing how vulnerable it was to a strike.
It would be just history repeating itself if this action by China led us to a way to replace Rare Earths entirely rendering them obsolete. But that still depends on us being able to duplicate the effects.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There are many rare-earth materials but as far as Neodymium and magnets are concerned, Neodymium is probably going to get replaced by Fe16N2 magnets as soon as they figure out how to mass-produce the particular crystal that makes this type of magnet. Of course the nice thing is no exotic rare-earth materials required.
Here's some random reference that describes it: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/fe16n2-crystals-most-magnetic-material.html You could probably find a better one but you won't because you're too lazy!
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Egad!
We must Fear china or else we will Perish!
The Rare Earths, though relatively abundant and simply expensive to process, are the Boot that the Yellow Peril People have on our Neck!
Forget the fact that we can get our own supply of the stuff relatively simply by just mining the supplies that are on our own territory, as long as we are willing to handle the ~5-year startup time and the (probably) higher unit prices.
What we must do now is PANIC because the CHINESE are plotting against us!
And don't worry that our Paranoia will contribute to the possibility of a devastating USA-China war; for now, all we can do is Worry and Fret!
To the Caves of Worry!
Rare earth metals aren't really that rare despite their name. China is good at mining them cheaply, which caused most everyone else shut down production. Some countries (U.S.A) are looking at reopening mines. By playing these games China may be shooting themselves in the foot. Time will tell.
There were many mines in North America. They were shut down because to comply with US/Canadian environmental regulation and pay the wages here would put them in a huge competitive disadvantage versus the Chinese mines. You just can't compete with places where they put environment and worker protection at such low places in their priorities.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
The "rare" in rare earths does not mean "scarce". Just start digging them out elsewhere.
as others have noted, there are enough rare earths, they aren't that rare. it's just that china, wihtout any work force laws or legal protections for its workers it is allowed to treat like slaves of the state, is able to parlay that into cheaper prices. so mining elsewhere withers and atrophies
if push came to shove, we can start new mines rather quickly
what worries me is manufacturing know how and infrastructure. it takes a generation to have a good manufacturing base, at least. and i'm not talking machines, i'm talking people. the manufacturing base is dying in the west, as everything moves to china
this is where china can really squeeze us, and we won't be able to react fast enough, because in a decade or two, we won't know how to make anything, it will all be made in china
we need to keep our manufacturing base, the whole spectrum of technologies and know how and expertise, humming along here
a rare earth is a rare earth, whether dug up in california or inner mongolia
but that 70 year old guy who knows how all about phase transitions in the manufacture of specialty glasses, or that 80 year old guy who knows all about resistance settings on collodial separation equipment, or whatever: when they go, its gone, the only other brain with that info is in shanghai
it's like us in the west watching iran trying to build a nuclear bomb and stumbling in its lack of knowhow. in 20-30 years, in a conflict, china could be in the same position, just watching us try to manufacture all sorts of high specialized industrial applications and us over here going "how do you do this?" "i dunno, the guy who knew that died 20 years ago" "well where's his knowledge backup?" "well, the bank of china bought that portfolio 10 years ago and moved it all to guangzhou, no one at the time thought it was a big deal"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...how do they work?
The world is how you make it
YES NEBRASKA
Now I get why we're in Afghanistan.
So each plane is powered by its own Azusa Pacific University (http://www.google.com/search?q=APU) and does not need US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (http://www.google.com/search?q=ICE) at higher speeds?
I'm confused, can you explain the acronyms for those of us that are not in the aviation industry?
It's alot easier to get out of industries than it is to get in. I suspect this won't be the last industry we'll want to redevelop. It was foolish to get out of it in the first place. The same can be said for other industries.
On the bright side, its bringing jobs - not just McJobs either - back home. The rise of China - especially if they ever let the yuan float - may turn out to be the best thing to happen to the US in decades.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
More sane recycle policy/incentives for all the products that use rare earth metals would help.
Den you misspewud feco mateeweoh.
Where will these iron-cobalt magnets be made? Yes, history will repeat.
Also, the limitations are there on commercial usage. Not on scientific research.
Like the continual scientific research on tasty, tasty whale meat and whale oil that Japan and Russia do.
Everything is about the cost of opportunity. Just ask Jack Sparrow - or the US Navy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
This is purely speculation, so take it with a grain of salt: No raw materials and manufacturing work from China due to embargoes and general asshattery --> Huge demand for mats and mfg --> No workforce willing/able/allowed to do the work --> the perpetually "almost there" robotics industry lurches forward to fill the void. The warehousing industry has already been transformed by robots, and theres plenty of talk about robotic mining already. I can't help but think that all this is quite a good thing.
So, where does this leave the world now? Well, China mines the majority of the ore, and processes all of it. In addition, they will only process it if THEY buy it. Basically, we have China able to stop exports and screw the world. And we saw that with Japan.
The best thing that the west can do, is re-start the processing of REE as quickly as possible. The smart thing is for the west to restart this in two or more different nations. That way, when China decides to move their cold war up the ladder, then we are still guaranteed production. In addition, it can keep prices down.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Re-starting mining is only 1-2 years of work. Starting a new mine may be 3-4 years depending on how big of an operation. CA is Re-opening Mountain Pass Mine, which was the largest mine at one time (and remains high in ore). In addition, it appears that mines in the west are going to be started. In particular, over in North West Colorado, by Rifle, Colorado.
The item that takes time AND MONEY, is the PROCESSING of the ores. That is what the feds should have backed Congressman's bill to spend upwards of 1 billion to re-start the processing. Sadly, W overrode DOD's objections and allowed China to take Magnequench. If not for that, we would still have processing here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
APU is auxillery power unit.
An electrical powerplant for plane. More economical to have APU supply power for things like lights & AC than to need to spin up engines when sitting on tarmac. The grandparent post is indicating the wheels (ground propulsion) will be driven by an electric motor powered by the APU.
On ICE I don't have clue. ICE is usually internal combustion engine but that doesn't make sense here. Propulsion on a conventional pasenger liner is from the jet engines which are obviously turbines not internal combustion.
Lets say that a foreing country have abundance of elsewhere's scarce resource. US government can claim that "the enemy" is there and invade. Worked pretty well with lithium and oil.
Which means ... there is no shortage at all, they just want it cheap.
It is no secret that rare earth is NOT rare at all, and China just have about 30-40% of the world's rare earth.
The only "monopoly" China has is selling them cheaply. The purported reason by Chinese officials is because the rare earth industry is heavily fragmented, and econ 101, with many identical sellers, big buyers from US and Japan can set the price so low that only razor thin margin remains. You are free to make up you own conspiracy on why it has been so cheap so far.
With such cheap source, it make no sense for other countries to mine their own rare earth, which also causes quite a lot of pollution, so all other mines were shut down elsewhere.
Now, after getting a pittance for all the rare earth sold for the past few decades, China finally wakes up and realize that having a rare earth reserve is actually IMPORTANT in the long term. And surprise(!), they don't to continue to sell on the cheap. So they are now trying to consolidate the rare earth mining industry (which takes time), and in the meanwhile, use administrative means to limit the export (i.e. limit their losses).
And what do countries like Japan and US do when China stop selling them cheap rare earth? "Wah Wah! China won't sell for pennies the stuff that we are too lazy to mines ourselves anymore, China EVIL MONOPOLY!"
Just like the call for H1B in the US when IT wages rises. "Wah Wah! IT staffs won't work for pennies anymore, WORKER SHORTAGE!"
Yeah, that's convincing.
Oliver.
Sorry to reply twice, but the article title is just too silly.
There is plenty of rare earth all around the world. So if you don't want to buy from China (or China won't sell to you), just mine it yourself.
Instead of printing money to give to bankers, why don't the US government just setup and run mines to extract rare earth from US itself? It create real jobs and solve this problem in one go.
But actually doing something to solve a problem? Nah... it is easier just to find someone to blame while still giving out pork to corporate supporters. It keeps the problem alive so more people can be blamed, and keep the pork money flowing too!
Oliver.
I have a buddy that has been developing such non-rare earth metal motors at a startup in Rapid City, SD... Dakota Power, LLC
I am excited by the prospect for replacing rare earth metals with easily produced FeCo matter.
What about the concentration of the platinum group metals ... 80% or so are found in South Africa and are central to every cars catalytic converter, not to say anything of the necessity of their properties in many other key industries.
don't they know God gave the Monopoly Rights to the US?
You could argue that it was foolish if it had been a conscious choice (i.e. if the government had controlled the industries like it does in Communist countries). In a (relatively) free market where companies are put out of business quickly by cheap imports, the only choice was in deciding how long to fight bankruptcy (and to lobby Congress for higher import tariffs) before realizing the fight had been lost.
. . . the jet engines which are obviously turbines not internal combustion.
Though I have never heard of them referred to as internal combustion engines before, jet engines obviously do not have combustion external to the engine.
The fuel burns inside the jet engine and is part of the working fluid, i.e. it is internal combustion.
I'm not a huge electronics fan, but every few years I like to buy a new video card and computer components. Can video cards be made without rare earths, or do they already do?
Stratfor published a fairly comprehensive article on this subject. The following link looks like a registration wall, but my understanding is that they'll just put the article in your inbox.
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101008_china_and_future_rare_earth_elements&h=a37a5
Part of the problem is that rare earth's have been so cheap they are being used some places where they are totally not needed.
There are plenty of applications where a switched variable reluctance motor is just as effective and efficient, and those do not require any permanent magnets.
(I've often wondered what nanotech might bring to bear on ferromagnetic materials for transformers and motors, to reduce hysteresis loss and increase saturation points. Doesn't seem to be an area that gets as much glory as developing the next more powerful permanent magnet.)
Someone had to do it.
It's alot easier to get out of industries than it is to get in. I suspect this won't be the last industry we'll want to redevelop. It was foolish to get out of it in the first place.
I'm sure the responsible managers got a huge bonus for the cost savings they created.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org