Posts Tagged ‘rare earth shortage’
Boeing’s Aerial Sensor Tech to Aid Search for Dwindling Rare Earth Elements
Rare earth minerals are crucial for everything from high-tech computing hardware to cell phones to military tech. Some estimates suggest China holds as much as 97 percent of the planet’s rare earth oxides, but even with those vast holdings the nation recently cut back on exports to feed its own insatiable demand for the stuff.
Meanwhile, new rare earth mines are planned in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Africa, but operations won’t be up and running for a few years. During that time, Boeing’s remote sensing technology will hopefully be able to confirm the existence of both “light” and “heavy” rare earth deposits in places like Idaho and Montana, where earlier sampling has shown concentrations of some valuable rare earth elements.
Boeing’s proprietary technology can be deployed from overhead via airplanes or satellites, scanning wide swaths of the ground for electromagnetic signatures that suggest the presence of certain substances like neodymium. The highly magnetic element is used in everything from hard drives to hybrid cars to fighter jets, and securing reserves of the stuff is essential to future industrial advances in everything from computing to alternative energy.
Put another way, we need rare earth elements to move forward with a lot of the technologies that are widely considered to be the future, be they wind turbines, cleaner-burning cars, or smart electrical grids. Which explains Boeing’s enthusiasm for joining the search; Boeing builds everything from airliners to satellites to fighter jets, not to mention many of the high-tech flight, targeting, and navigation systems therein. In fact, though Boeing isn’t saying much about the technology, there’s a good chance the very sensing tech being used to search for rare earth elements is itself chock full of rare earth elements.
That fact isn’t lost on companies like Boeing. Re-establishing a domestic supply chain of rare earths won’t take place overnight, but with so much skin in the game there’s a good chance American industry will figure out how to get it done.
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In The Future, This Balloon Will Cost $100
has an interview today with Cornell scientist Robert Richardson, who has worked on the superfluid properties of helium. He believes the world will run out of the gas in short order.
The U.S. government has been selling helium disgracefully cheaply, Richardson says; we apparently supply 80 percent of the world's helium, and in 1996, Congress passed an act dictating that we get rid of our stockpile by 2015. He wants the government to get out of the helium business and let the market dictate prices.
"Unfortunately, party balloons will be $100 each rather than $3, but we'll have to live with that," he says.
No other substance has a lower boiling point than helium, which makes it a great cooling source. Liquid helium chills superconducting magnets for MRI scanners, for instance. It's used in fiber optics, liquid crystal displays, neutron detectors, quantum computing and more.
The only way to -- actually a specific isotope used in science experiments and security equipment, called helium-3 -- would be to capture it from the decay of tritium, which is a radioactive hydrogen isotope. But the U.S. stopped making tritium in 1988.
Our current supplies come from radioactive alpha decay in rocks, according to Richardson. If we run out completely, we will have to recover helium from the air, making it cost 10,000 times what it does today.
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Shortage of Rare Earth Minerals May Cripple U.S. High-Tech, Scientists Warn Congress
On the sunnier side, rare earths could power a future generation of clean tech
China has supplied 91 percent of U.S. consumption of rare earths between 2005 and 2008, and continues to represent the world's largest rare earth exporter. But the Chinese have warned that their own domestic industry appetite for rare earths may eventually force them to stop exporting -- an action that would leave the U.S. high-tech industries crippled without other readily available supplies.
"The United States, not so long ago, was the world leader in producing and exporting rare earths," said Brad Miller, the Democratic Representative from North Carolina and chairman of the subcommittee. "Today, China is the world's leader."
Experts testified that China's state-owned mines had set artificially low prices for the rare earth market, and that Chinese manufacturers had also forced most U.S. rare earth and permanent magnet manufacturers out of business. Rare earth magnets represent a in Toyota's Prius hybrid and other clean tech.
Companies such as IBM have also begun investing in and other technologies that don't require rare earths, partly because of the dangers of relying too much upon foreign suppliers.
But there's also opportunity from investing in rare earths, besides avoiding a supply chain problem. Karl Gschneidner Jr., a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in Iowa, called for the creation of a National Research Center on Rare Earths and Energy as well as a National Research Center for Magnetic Cooling.
Magnetic refrigeration is a hot new area for energy-efficient, green technology that can handle cooling and climate control. Cooling below room temperature currently takes up 15 percent of all the energy consumed in the U.S., but the rise of magnetic refrigeration could slash that by 5 percent.
Given all the energy problems with in the Information Age, we also imagine that Google and other companies might welcome magnetic refrigeration with open arms. That is, as long as the U.S. can secure its own domestic rare earth supply or find new overseas suppliers.