A new challenge to China's economy?

[alhoon]

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110...areearth_japan

The gist:
China currently supplies 97% of the rare earth minerals used to make high tech products. Yet, large quantities of such minerals were found and are readily extractable from the Pacific's ocean floor, in international waters.

"
He estimated rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion metric tons, compared to global reserves currently confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey of just 110 million tonnes that have been found mainly in China, Russia and other former Soviet countries, and the United States. "

"China, which accounts for 97 percent of global rare earth supplies, has been tightening trade in the strategic metals, sparking an explosion in prices."

" Extracting the deposits requires pumping up material from the ocean floor. "Sea mud can be brought up to ships and we can extract rare earths right there using simple acid leaching," he said.
"Using diluted acid, the process is fast, and within a few hours we can extract 80-90 percent of rare earths from the mud." "
(I just don't want to know where the waste acid would go... )



I think that would cause China's chokehold on rare earth minerals to losen up and they'll have to lower the prices, perhaps considerably.
Do you think that would affect their economy or their importance? Or rare earth minerals aren't still that important to China's economy?
What about China using them as bargaining chips, since they supply 97% of rare earth minerals?

[Finnduil]

WW3 starts when the nations race to extract those minerals from the ocean floor. It will be entertaining to watch until my house gets nuked.

[SPECTREtm]

There is also vast quantaties on these materials in the arctic, which is why that region will become very interesting over the next couple of decades. Russia stated last year that they were against any militarization of the region and now they're preparing to have at least one brigade ready for deployment in the arctic.

[Grouchio]

So I wonder... How could you defeat China?

[mrmouth]

China having the huge reserves they do, and no issue with skirting environmental standards, had the ability to render Japan's economy all but dead in the future. So this is very significant that Japan found this, and they will likely find more.

But they have to extract it, and there is no technology to do so at the moment.

And Russia, yeah...

[alhoon]

But they have to extract it, and there is no technology to do so at the moment.

Read the article. There is technology to do it.
As a mining engineer I could tell you a couple of methods, but this is not the science forum.

I would just tell you that the technology to extract and mine it is very simple and could be done from the 60's at least, if not earlier.
More or less it's "Big ship throws large bucket to the bottom of the sea attached with large cable. Scoops some sand and rises the bucket to the ship. Put sand in acid for a sometime and stir. Take the used acid containing the rare earth ions and throw the right salt in it so that rare earth minerals form and drop. Take rare earth minerals, recycle the acid and repeat. Take sand waste, neutralize it with some soda so it's not hazardous for sea life and damp it in the sea."

The new thing is they managed to find a way to map the ocean floor and found where to look. That is something that I'm itching to learn how they did as an engineer.

You see, the ocean floor is very large. Checking an area say as large as Europe with kinda expensive tests would normally get decades with traditional tests, i.e throw a bucket to the booooottom of the sea, scoop some sand, rise it to the ship and test it; repeat 5 km away.
They propably used geological data to find out where to start looking and geostatistics after that. Anyway it's very interesting. (Especially since I happen to know geostatistics and I could work there. )

[Juvenal]

Pacific rare-earth discovery: Actually just gigatonnes of dirt

Take a lot of acid and it might seem valuable
By Tim Worstall
Posted in Science, 4th July 2011 15:19 GMT

There has been a lot of excitement over a recent paper by Japanese researchers who have discovered billions – hundreds of billions – of tonnes of rare earths under the Pacific Ocean. Those rare earths, you will recall, are essential to so much of modern technology, from those sweet little earbuds of your iPod and the magnets in a hard drive, through to planet-saving windmills and the crystals that make an MRI machine work.

And yes, it's true, scientists have located vast deposits – hundreds of billions of tonnes of rare earths – at a depth of 5,000 metres under the ocean. The paper is here and thanks to the miracles of people with full Nature access I've been able to read it. The basic problem is the difference between what is technically possible and what is economically possible.

What they've found is that there are vast plains of silt in various parts of the ocean where there's a decent concentration of the rare earths: 1,000 to 2,000 ppm sorts of levels, a kilo or two per tonne, 0.1 to 0.2 per cent. They surmise that the cause is iron fumes that come out of the mid-ocean vents collecting and concentrating the rare earths from the seawater before falling to that ocean floor. Some of the beds of these silts are tens of metres high (up to 50 in places), according to their estimates. Yes, there's an awful lot of rare earths there.

But is it worthwhile to extract it?
However, the part that doesn't make sense, at least not to me, is how to then make this silt a worthwhile source of extraction. They're certainly correct that if you dredge it up then wash it in dilute acids then you'll get a nice concentrate of the mixed rare earths. Easy enough to cut the salts out of that and dump your old acid over the side along with the 99.9 per cent of the silt you don't want any more (hey, we're in mid-ocean here!).

However, a concentration of 1,000 to 2,000 ppm isn't actually anything all that much to write home about. That red mud which went splat over Hungary has about the same sort of concentration. As does the other 40 to 80 million tonnes a year produced, including the 2 billion tonnes lying around in ponds. We've known for decades that we can extract the rare earths from this stuff: wash it in acid and get a nice solution of the metals. However – and here's the problem – you have to use so much acid that you can't make a profit doing this.

I say this not just on the Friedmanite basis that hundred dollar bills don't appear on pavements: for if they did someone would already have picked them up. It isn't that no one does this as yet, which would prove that it can't be done. It is that people have tried to do this (at least I have, in Greece, a couple of years back) and have found that the cost of getting the materials out is more than people will pay you for the materials you've got out. And this is a nice fine silt lying in ponds at ground level, silt which people will pay you to take away, not silt you've got to lift through 5,000 metres of salt water.


Yttrium and other rare earths are apparently nestling on the sea bed...

It is possible to make the red mud thing work: by taking out some of the other valuable metals first. In this way, the extractor shares overheads over multiple income streams, plus concentrating the rare earths further, reducing the acids and reagents needed and thus making it all cost effective. Send me $20m and I'll build a plant to do this. But our Japanese researchers are going to run into exactly the same problem. Extracting just the rare earths at such concentrations costs too much. So, what else can they extract to defray those costs?

I don't know – and having read their paper, I don't think they do yet either.

There's a linguistic distinction used in the mining industry, the one between dirt and ore. Your veg patch and the North Sea bed both contain gold and uranium, but they're still just dirt really. Extraction would cost more than the value of what is extracted. If we can extract the metals at less than the price we'll be paid for them, then, and only then, the dirt transforms into ore.

So far, at least as far as I can see, the researchers have just found a very large amount of rare earth containing dirt, not an ore. ®

[mrmouth]

Read the article. There is technology to do it.
As a mining engineer I could tell you a couple of methods, but this is not the science forum.

While of course we have gotten to the seabed with various methods of extraction, they have not actually even begun to mine metals underwater. The first contract was granted in January of this year and will take 5-10 years to even start mining.

Possibly the biggest issue, as always, is environmental. These ships are going to not only have to collect the metals, but also contain the slag, or even pump it back to the seabed which would be the best option, but would be highly regulated. Especially is Asia with the fisheries being so important. All on a rolling sea...

It could easily cost 2-3x what a similar land mining operation would cost, and thus, not be profitable at all. There are many people in the economics sector watching this very closely.

[alhoon]

It could easily cost 2-3x what a similar land mining operation would cost, and thus, not be profitable at all. There are many people in the economics sector watching this very closely.

I sincerely doupt it would cost more than land mining. The fisheries are not 1500 miles off coast while mining ships could. The sand would be thrown back to the sea after the hazardous remains of the leeching and acid recycling have been neutralized, with a bit of NaOH for example.
BUT as I've said, I'll consult my professors about that and post it in the athenaum.

[danzig]

So I wonder... How could you defeat China?

Defeating China and invading it would be two separate things, one is most certainly doable (cutting off their foreign oil/energy supply with US navy, air strikes, fostering internal unrest *monks with m16s!*) and one isnt. Though why the talk of war anyway, this is economic and in international waters.

[alhoon]

Well, this goes scientific. I'll check nature for their paper when I go back to the university and I'll talk with our enrichment professor about it and make a post in Athenaum. If it's 2000ppm IMO though (and that's an educated guess! take it with a grain of salt) it is economically profitable... with large ships. I'll have to check the quantity of acid needed though.

Keep in mind that with the rise of price and use of rare earths, even if not economically feasible at the time it will be in 5 years, especially if there are some advances in the area of recycling the acid. Japan would be smart to start investing in "know-how" about this.

What I disagree with the author about is the "you throw your used acid and 99.9% of the mud away." No, you recycle the acid or you're economically doomed. It's insane to throw the acid away. Also he talks about the bauxite red mud. Yes, there have been efforts to use that and proved not economically viable but it was a different situation. It was quite more hazardous material IIRC and the enviromental issues were worse. Of course his point of "and yet you didn't have to pay the gas bill for rising tons of sand by 5km" is valid.

PS. About the gold and Uranium in sea: If gold reaches 5K$/ounce it will become economically feasible. With advances in that front, I think by the time it reaches 3K$/ounce we will have sea mines of gold.
And goodbye ocean life, because that's a lot of acid needed and by digging up the sand they'll disturb huge areas destroying whole ecosystems.


Back on topic: Scientific enquires aside, I'm fairly sure even if it's not profitable now, it will be in a few years. And that's where China's rare earth chokehold will start loosening.

[Juvenal]

It seems to me that there is a political aspect to this. If the Japanese can make enough people think that alternative Rare Earth sources are feasible, then China will be obliged to drop its prices in order not to lose control of the market.

PS. Not being an expert, I would be interested to know how you can recover your acid after the extraction process.

[alhoon]

PS. Not being an expert, I would be interested to know how you can recover your acid after the extraction process.

Next week I'll go back to the university, talk to my professors and post in the Athenaum. I'll give a link here. Keep in mind that acid doesn't grow into trees either. Without recycling the acid, in order to recover billions of tons, you would need to spend billions of tons of highly concentrated acid too.

About the political yes, that's what I thought too. Keep in mind though, that I don't think it's totally a bluff from the Japanese though. As I said even if it's not feasible now, it will be later.
However I don't think the Chinese rised the prices for the Lulz though. They propably had to rise prises as salaries started increasing in places of China as life improves for many of the Chinese, enviromental issues start slowly entering the planning even for China etc. I.e as China develops more and more, it slowly catches with the times which means costs increase and will keep to increase.

[alhoon]

Honestly I thought he meant "defeat China economically". And truth is, that China has a lot more things available than the chokehold on rare earths, but rare earths are important. As I said in the OP, I think it would challenge the Chinese economic growth not stop it nor cripple their economy.

[alhoon]

Well even if it's not profitable now it may be in 5 years. Also it's not about national rights. The Pacific and the Atlantic are big, you could do it outside of national waters, you know, around the places used for nuking tests. If you think that dumping neutralized sand to the seabed is bad for the enviroment, compare it with a 500KT nuclear warhead blowing up in the depths.

And as others said, it's not that important if it's economically feasible at the moment as the potentional this has to force China consider lowering the prices for rare earths. According to the article below, China exports about half their REE to Japan. They would be quite scared by that prospect.

Keep in mind another thing too: If the price of rare earths goes x5, your cellphone's cost would rise by 5$ or so. Sure rare earths are costly but the cost of the high tech equipment isn't that much the materials as the tech behind the laptop or the cellphone. So, as the "cheap" rare earths deposits start to vanish, this method will become a very viable alternative.
Remember: In 1960 gasoline costed... next to nothing. Today it's expensive. We still use it though. Reserves that were considered completely unprofitable in the 80s are bringing billions of profit today.

Again, I'll have to consult some research on how much "cheap" rare earth exists today, but I doupt it will be around for long. 1000-2000 ppm considered borderline profitable? LoL. I don't expect this to hold. We go through much rare earth and we recycle less than 3% of that according to what we were told in SDIMI 2011 (A conference on Sustainability).

Feasibility?
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/9883...nce-studie.htm

"Rare earth prices are soaring, up on average by 300 per cent between January and August 2010, with the rise for each individual metal ranging from 22 per cent to as much as 720 per cent. "
Keep that rate up for a few years and it will be feasible to take them out of the moon (so to speak).

However:
"Samarium, a rare earth used in the navigation system of M1A2 Abrams tanks has jumped from $4.5 a kg to $34"
Nope, I don't think that with 1000 ppm from the ocean floor it would be economically feasible to extract samarium with just 34$/Kg. You need a ton of sand to earn 34$ and the ship can only do so much. Unless the scoop is huge and able to scoop up hundreds of tons in one go, that's a bit too low. However that just means you have to do a bit more research (with guys like me ) to find reserves with 3000 ppm or so. With 100$/ton of sand is quite feasible to make profit IMO (again, a guess).

Anyway: according to the article 99 MTns. Currently we use 0,125 MTns/year. That increases yearly propably, and quite much.

"China, ... or 49.8 percent, of its total rare earth to Japan, representing 167 percent rise year on year, according to China's Ministry of Commerce."

Now, a 167% increase in rare earth extraction is just too much, so I think it's not worldwide. But if it's a 20% increase/year then we would go through those 100MTns in 35-40 years. If it's a 40% increase/year then we would go through them in just 19 years. So, prices are bound to increase and quite fast, whatever salaries, inflation and standards of living do.