Recycling And Improved Production Techniques Could Provide Alternative Rem Sources

Activity in the rest of the world has more than ever focused on finding alternative

sources of these essential components for much of the 21st Century's IT and clean energy technology as China continues to limit its exports of Rare Earth Metals.

The USA's Congress has passed a bill with the intention of reducing its current restrictions on new mining projects involving rare metals. The bill has been opposed by the country's environmental lobby and still has to be passed by the US Senate before becoming law.

There has been very little production of REMs in the US, partly because of the time it takes to get all the permissions in place and partly because it is a difficult process to extract them from the ores in which they are found.

Also in July Japan and Vietnam have opened up a joint research centre in Hanoi predicting that it could start refining REMs in 2013. The intention is for Japan to cease to rely on China for its supplies. Honda, Japan's manufacturer of clean energy hybrid vehicles, has already started a joint recycling venture to recover the REMs used in the vehicles' batteries for re-use.

In the USA a company called GTSO Resources, a subsidiary of Green Technology Solutions, has announced that it is working to develop what it calls an urban mining initiative.

According to calculations only 15% of the REMs in discarded mobile phones and other modern electronic equipment is recovered and the company has identified this as a potential lucrative opportunity for investors.

A recent report from the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and United Nations University revealed that e-waste can contain precious metals in amounts up to 50 times richer than ores mined from the ground.

A number of modern industries rely heavily on REMs, including the US Missile guidance systems, drones and sophisticated avionics. They also play a crucial part in the batteries for clean technology hybrid cars, in wind turbines and solar panels as well as mobile phones and other electronic equipment.

China has been the world's main supplier of Rare Earth Metals, providing up to 95% of these essential elements, until it announced early in 2012 that it intended to restrict exports, prompting a complaint by the USA, Japan and the EU to the World Trade Organisation for investigation. China has since revealed that its decision was based on concerns about its own declining stocks and about the damage the production of REMs was causing to its environment.

China's largest REM producer Baotou Rare Earth has also just announced that it has teamed up with six other Chinese REM producers to start a rare earths trading platform in early August in an effort to allow more transparency in prices.

The World Trade Organisation will resume its investigation of the complaint against the Chinese on July 23 2012, but in the meantime the situation has stimulated activity in many countries outside China both in the search for viable REM deposits for mining and in the increasing focus on recycling those REMs that already exist in discarded products.

Copyright (c) 2012 Alison Withers

by: Alison Withers

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