A Genuinely Scarce Rare Earth Element
Most Rare Earth Elements (REEs) or Metals (REMs) are generally rare not so much because
they are hard to find, but because they exist in small quantities in other ores and can be difficult and costly to extract.
However there is one REE that is genuinely rare and hard to find and this is called tellurium, sometimes also written as tellerium. It is recovered as by-products during copper, lead-zinc, gold and platinum ore processing.
The substance was first discovered in Transylvania in 1782 by Franz-Joseph Mller von Reichenstein in a mineral containing tellurium and gold and subsequently named by Heinrich Klaproth after the Latin word for earth, tellus.
There are very few countries with reserves of tellurium but there are significant deposits of tellurium in Sweden, in particular at the Kankberg goldmine, where concentrations at are fairly strong, averaging 186 grams per tonne. Therefore Sweden is a strong contributor to global tellurium production. British Columbia, Canada, also has a number of highly-mineralized, tellurium-supported copper and gold prospects. China also has some reserves.
In 2008 the world's chief producers of refined tellurium were Canada, USA, Japan and Peru.
Brittle, mildly toxic, rare, silver-white, tellurium looks similar to tin and is chemically related to selenium and sulphur.
Although its primary use has been metallurgy, where it is used in iron, copper and lead alloys to make them easier to machine, it is also used in clean energy technology.
Tests have shown that its use in the making of solar panels significantly increases their efficiencies for solar cell electric power generation. It is also a constituent in the compounds used in the semi-conductor industry.
As a tellurium suboxide it is used in the media layer of several types of rewritable optical discs, including Rewritable Compact Discs (CD-RW), Rewritable Digital Video Discs (DVD-RW) and Rewritable Blu-ray Discs.
There are many aspects of modern technology that use this REE and other uses include color ceramics, the production of glass fibres for telecommunications, in blasting caps for explosives and for vulcanising rubber to improve its heat resistance.
While there are substitutes that can replace tellurium in most of its uses, this usually results in a loss in production efficiency or product characteristics. Bismuth, calcium, lead, phosphorus, selenium and sulphur are some of substitutes that can be used in certain processes.
World tellurium consumption was estimated to have increased in 2010 with a consequent increase in price attributed to increased demand for solar cells. This makes tellurium a particularly good investment among the REEs.
Copyright (c) 2012 Alison Withers
by: Alison Withers
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