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Rare Earth- A Thought on Being Green and the Supply and Subsequent Demand on Earth Elements
I've often scoffed at the people who drive hybrids and think they're doing everyone a big favor. After the much publicised "Cash for Clunkers" effort, to get American drivers to "go green," I find it interesting the reasoning. Spend an extra $6,000 to $10,000 (on average compared to a similar non-hybrid vehicle) and get marginally better fuel milage, which, would take you years and years to ever fully realize in cost savings.
But another facet that has not been talked about much is the global impact hybrids and other eco-friendly battery operated devices have on the planet. This time, from a basic elements perspective.
Today, Steve Gorman from Reuters writes "As hybrid cars gobble rare metals, shortage looms" a story how materials used in the production of car batteries is quietly outstripping supply.
Rare earth metals "covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed." Gorman hints that once promising new source of "rare earths" is slated to reopen in California by 2012.
One rare earth depicted is neodymium- a key component in the production of magnets for motors and generators. Others mentioned are terbium and dysprosium- also used in magnets.
Of the biggest offenders to the looming shortages- the Toyota Prius. The article sites- "Toyota plans to sell 100,000 Prius cars in the United States alone for 2009, and 180,000 next year..." Toyota forcasts sales of hybrids totalling 1,000,000 units per year starting just next year in 2010!
Another offender of the rare earth shortages- China- as their industries begin to consume most of their own rare earth production. Leaving Toyota among others looking for viable reserves.
While Toyota is quiet of confirming or denying anything, other than buying a Prius is "green," they and others are looking to Canada and Vietnam for possible rare earth possibilities.
As for going "green" and driving a hybrid- if it's not one natural resource you're burning through- it's invariably another.
Maybe in 30 or so years- they'll have "Rebates for Rare Earths." Don't laugh- it could happen.
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"Maybe in 30 or so years- they'll have "Rebates for Rare Earths." Don't laugh- it could happen."
Cash for Lanthanides
Quite likely, compressed-air car will be what they'll try to get us to use. Technologies for electric vehicles took three decades to mature. Remember how they tried to get us to stop using horse drawn carriage because of pollution from horse poop.
Let's see:
Loan-forgiveness for Lanthanum
Credits for Cerium
Payments for Praseodymium
Nickles for Neodymium
Slips for Samsarium
E-cards for Erbium
Gils for Gadolinium
Tips for Terbium
Dimes for Dysprosium
Articles such as this by ZH'ers are great.
However Angry Bear, Max Kieser, Pension Pulse are garbage and are certainly not on the level of ZH.
Losing the edge.
Un-thoughtful? Research? "Rare Earths" are actually not all that rare. (They were named back when gay meant happy.) Like renaming Ford to Rare Auto to make it worth more. Monzanite sands, one of the sources, cover many beaches in India.
Even more egregious than the magnetic materials are the battery materials. Ever noticed how ALL of your batteries are considered toxic waste? Let's see, our choices are good old fashioned lead with an acid chaser, alkalines, metal-hydrides, various lithium compounds and who knows what will be the next wonder material.
The second thing to note about ALL batteries is the limited lifetime, and it is usually shorter than the advertised lifetime for various technical and sales reasons. Rechargeable batteries can only be charged and discharged a limited number of times and then it's off to a cozy retirement of slowly quietly poisoning some location.
Those who believe that batteries are "green" are sorely misled.
Lithium supply is also an issue. There's lots of it in Bolivia (a white powder?), but other sources need to be developed.
So having been in Bolivia several times, that means somewhere between "none available" and "neener neener, we finally have something we'll only sell to Iranians!"
You should check out the type of waste products that come out of a typical oil refinery.
In Seattle, alkalines can go in the normal rubbish, but ALL other batteries are considered hazardous waste.
ALL??? Although 5% of women are allergic to Nickel (coinage, earings and flatware as stainless steel) the nickel metal in metal hydrides is not toxic, the nickel oxide and alkali react with carbon dioxide and reducing materials in landfill to become inert and non-toxic. Older 'alkaline batteries' and 'Ni-cads' used zinc and cadmium amalgums (mercury compounds), cadmium toxicity is related to mercury. Precious Silver, in batteries, is also haz waste. The original industrial battery was the Edison cell, using iron and nickel. Very interesting history of how the lead-acid battery supplanted it (economic conspiracy theory).
The economic case for hybrids is an artifact of the tax structure on diesel vs. gasoline. They make no sense in other parts of the world.
The air quality case is about cities exporting their pollution to the suburbs and power plants.
The carbon case: as long as electricity is produced primarily from coal, plugins will have a bigger carbon footprint than either gas or diesel.
Are power plants ever required to charge the batteries
in a Hybrid?
Do power plants pollute less than cars?
Question one: not really, no. I suppose the batteries are given an intial charge, but maybe that just happens as the auto is driven around.
The answer to question two is "maybe." Central power stations are usually much more efficient than small generators. It's how the power is distributed and used that will be the trick.
As the author of the thread stated, the real problem will be the metals used. For example, Li is not distributed equally in the earths crust
Guess who has an interest in the largest rare earth mine in the US
"Chevron Mining Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell its Mountain Pass rare earth mining operations to Rare Earth Acquisitions LLC. The transaction is expected to close in late September, 2008.
REA is a special purpose company owned by Resource Capital Funds, Pegasus Partners IV, LP, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Traxys North America LLC and Carint Group LLC. Included in the acquisition is the Molycorp name and upon closing, the company will be renamed Molycorp Minerals LLC"
Commodity manipulation here we come...
I'm sure Generation Investment Mgmt has a piece of this as well
We're screwed regardless. Let's burn all the oil and coal, live it up while we can.
You will not be able to burn all the coal. There is to much of it.
"Spend an extra $6,000 to $10,000 (on average compared to a similar non-hybrid vehicle)"
I'm not sure where you're getting that figure. E.g., a Camry hybrid is about $4000 more than a similarly-equipped Camry non-hybrid and the hybrid has some features that you'd pay extra for on the non-hybrid.
That said, hybrids have never seemed to live up to their claims of being especially green. When hybrids first came out, someone (can't remember who but it was on NPR and several other mainstream media outlets) did a study and, after accounting for building costs, etc., Camry (non-hybrid) was better for the environment than Prius.
Guess who is one of the largest supporters of plug in hybrids with their ads?
Yes Peabody Coal - the largest coal producer in US.
Get all the cars on the grid - more coal usage.
Green is the new Black
I have always felt that this was a major payday for Gore. The whole thing stinks and cap n trade is the new cdo's. Now we will trade and tax the air your breath that will kill you.
BRAVO!!
As long as our civilization consumes more than we return to the earth, there is no "green" to be had. The whole idea of "sustainable" is misleading because the entire consumption process (extraction, transportation, production, use, recycling) is rarely accurately measured.
In terms of the notion that "Cash for Clunkers" (was an) effort, to get American drivers to "go green," - C4C was the administrations' first attempt at marketing automobiles e.g. employee pricing. Pretty soon we'll see the White House all decked out with those colorful flags and streamers that adorn used car lots and maybe even a giant Gorilla proclaiming a monster sale.
Yeah Slimmy and Anon;
Finally someone is thinking. Exportation of pollution is the greatest offense of all. Unless you're plugging in to your roof top panels to charge your spare battery, you're just causing pollution elsewhere to feel good locally. Anon, power plants operate at anywhere from <30 and up to 40% efficiency. The car, depends on gas mileage, anywhere from 18 to 20 percent, that's before the mechanical losses in your drive train, tires, and car aerodynamics. Looks like electric is great, right? Now assuming mechanical and aerodynamics being the same, remember, transmission losses for powerlines and transformers. Conversion factors, from electricity to your batteries and back again. What do all the losses add up too? That's subject to debate, and believe me there are a lot of master debaters out there. Good luck and thanks for thinking.
Those numbers sound remarkably low to me, especially the power plants. Do you have a link for that?
The simplest site is Wiki, I know there is a lot of bunk on wiki but this article isn't too far off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant
The easiest way for me to explain, you can look for yourself, is to look up the energy conversion factor for btu to watt, approximately 0.29 watt-hour per btu. You need a thousand watts to make a kilowatt-hour. Power plant efficiency is measured in "heat rate" which is a measure of how much heat input provides a given amount of electrical power. In this case Btu's per kilowatt-hour. The best units, and most expense, are in the 8,500 btu/kwh range. So, just do the math and you come up with 40%. The vast majority of plants don't operate in this range.
Still much more efficient to use electricity.
90%+ efficient electric motors.
Transmission & distribution losses only about 7%.
Lithium batteries are 95% charge/discharge efficient.
As you note, you can source electricity from the grid or from your rooftop - can't do that with any petroleum product!
Batteries remain expensive enough that most future electric vehicles will still carry an on-board generator.
Just reference the second law of thermodynamics. That's not going to change.
Rather than flushing the stimulus money down the toilet, why don't we build more of these?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
Let's do the math
Each reactor powers 20k homes at $30 million a pop, and there are 120 million households in the US.
So we could power every house in the US for a mere $180 billion, or approximately 1/4 of the stimulus. Nah, that makes too much sense.
second that
that looks awesome, hadn't heard of them before, cheers for the link.
I personally like the thorium reactors. You turn on a alpha particle emitter, aka MASER, and there is a nuclear reaction. You turn off the MASER and the reaction stops in a few minutes. It is also more abundant than uranium, and contained in rare earth minerals. Just consider it a two for one special. Wikipedia has a nice long winded writeup on it.
Soviets used a miniature reactor similar to DOE design in a mine, worked fine for awhile, but the end result was a mine and nearby town that are contaminated for the next thousand years or so.
The whole 'green' thing is the next bubble. It's all just another fad kind of like crox, berkinstocks, etc etc etc. I will continue to drive my Expedition and turn my AC on freakin the freezer setting as long as I am willing to pay for it.
The whole 'green' thing is the next bubble. It's all just another fad kind of like crox, berkinstocks, etc etc etc. I will continue to drive my Expedition and turn my AC on freakin the freezer setting as long as I am willing to pay for it.
It will be the height of irony when the greenies, lefties, and social justice types lock themselves to the bulldozers at the rare earth metals mining pits, claiming the harm of such things to the indigenous cultures and the environment...
The whole 'green' thing is the next bubble. It's all just another fad kind of like crox, berkinstocks, etc etc etc. I will continue to drive my Expedition and turn my AC on freakin the freezer setting as long as I am willing to pay for it!!!
Anyway you slice it, we're gonna need cleaner solutions for energy & transportation. There's a lot of exciting innovations being developed; which I'm sure most on these boards are savvy too. It irks the hell outta me that we're pissing-away possible trillions to further entrench the established oligarchy, when a fraction of that amount pumped into R&D could yield untold fruits & solutions - environmental, economic, political. Talk about wasted resources.
we live to consume, burn & waste.
your alternative is ... what...?
The scarcity of resources is a problem not only for 'green' cars, it is one in general. That will probably cause some problems for our way of living and get us to have to rethink all the things we now take for granted. Maybe some mining on Mars or Saturn moon would do the trick.
http://zeropointfield.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/now-get-us-out-of-that/
If you want clean cars go for fuel cell and hydgrogen.
And where exactly are we going to get the hydrogen? Scoop it out of Jupiter?
Luckily there is enough on this planet. It can be obtained from Water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water
Electrolysis is only about 50% efficient, once you count the energy needed to compress that hydrogen to a usable volume (need a 10,000 psi tank to get any decent vehicle range)
Then you have to run the hydrogen back through a 50% efficient fuel cell.
I'd rather see the same amount of electricity going into a 95% efficient lithium battery, and running a 90% efficient electric motor.
With a standard ICE-powered generator as a range extender (cheap, but more efficient than an engine)
Unfortunately fuel cells require platinum, which is also a scarce resource.
Currently yes, but in diminishing amounts.
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1236#_Platinum:_Vital_Component
and there is also research to replace it entirely.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21838/
No free lunch- well done.
So, hybrids.
I have a Camry hybrid, paid about 4k more than no-hybrid. Consistently I get 40-42mpg and my commute is now 100miles/day but for the past 2 years used to be 150miles/day. When the price of gas was 4$/gal (NY area) I calculated spending about 12$/day only in gas for 150miles. I think in the past 2+years I recovered only form the gas economy the premium. Now the car has over 100k miles and there is no issue with the battery (knock on wood!) and I hope that by the time I retire it there will be none. Usually the metals can be recycled, it is only an economic issue (at what cost) but can be done. I think the rare elements are more used in the magnetic trains than in the (China, Japan, Germany, France - TGV??) than in the cars these days. The battery in the camry I guess is Li-ion, need to check that. My fear is that if the baterry goes due to management power systems in the car, the whole car might not work. But I did not bough this car for environment or show off. Purely economic reasons, like handing the keys of an underwater mortgage.
Think Nickel-Metal Hydride...
Lithium-ion is only now being scaled up for autos.
BTW the eco-footprint from nickel mining is terrible. Check it out.
The better way out is hydro-power from extreme climates. British Columbia has huge hydro-potential. Peru has enough hydro-potential to power the ENTIRE hemisphere -- ALL energy needs, not just juice.
Uh, wrong. Peru cannot supply the entire hemisphere with hydro power.
60MW hydro potential (multiply by 24 x 365 to get MWh per year)
http://www.fonamperu.org/general/mdl/documentos/GraficoGoodBusiness.pdf
17 trillion kWh world yearly consumption (electricity alone)
http://www.indexmundi.com/world/electricity_consumption.html
Learn to do math.
Your citation states 60,000 MW...
So your math is off by three zeros.
investing for ninnies!
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/News/2008/4/Pages/Ninja-Neodymium-Investors.aspx
these guys seem to have their heads screwed on..
howbout some clean people ... y'know the fuckers running things
Rare Earths were first noted in Sweden, hence some of the names.
Taken as a whole the rare earths are about as rare as copper.
They only seem rare because until recently no one prospected for them; they had no market.
The number one market for rare earths is lighting; hence the market is willing to pay $ 800,000 per ton for this or that. A great deal of that price reflects purification after mining. Because of their similar chemical behaviors separation operations are expensive -- almost as bad as uranium enrichment but not quite.
If we all lived near where we worked that would solve a huge problem. Driving 50 miles each way to work, wasting 3 hours plus/day in the car is such a waste of human time and fossil fuel.
Yeah, great point. Because it's not like oil exists in limited quantities either.
There's another couple fundamental differences between consuming all the oil resources, vs. "consuming" rare earth resources. The rare earth elements in batteries, especially, are highly recyclable. Consuming oil actually CONSUMES it, at least for a few tens of millions of years until it naturally regenerates.
The consumption of many of the materials used in electric (or hybrid) vehicles also doesn't have nearly the immediate negative impact that burning oil does (air pollution).
I wish you finance clowns would take a science class, and stop just blindly opposing every new idea that isn't the cheapest option.
I just made a similar comment, so I'll also chip in on this one: Hear hear!!
Extremely good point about finance clowns that should take science classes: Lets at least keep *somewhat* to each our expertises, should we? I listen to you finance experts for finance advice and explanations - then you financiers listen to science guys for science advice and explanations.
How many finance-morons haven't I heard that still dispute global warming? I get sick of such boneheads. And very angry.
(hides funny hat) hey I'm not a clown and it was my science background that helped me make brazillions of soon to be worthless bucks that were taxed for your free education!
Why can't a diesel get 100mpg?
Because they don't want it to.
You're telling me that car technology has not improved in 50 years since VW released the diesel bug?
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Every year we engineer progressive new body styles and marketing concepts but no real innovation goes into the engine.
Plug ins? Hybrids? Both ignore the issue entirely. Neither decreases the number of inputs relative to the number of outputs. In fact, they add complexity to a system that doesn't need it.
Oh please.
Here's one reason why: You know those pistons inside your engine? They go UP AND DOWN, right? The problem with this, is that they have to reverse direction ALL THE TIME, see? You accelerate it downwards, but then you have to stop it, and accelerate it upwards. Then you have 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever of these. That is a HUGE damn waste - and guarantees that you cannot ever exceed some certain limit of effectiveness of such an engine style.
There are several other engine designs that try to circumvent this /reciprocating cycle/ (up and down motion) - in particular the Wankel engine, rather extensively used by Mazda in several of their cars. But these have their own rather huge problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine
You may start here for some information. Please read before whining again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocating_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Engine_technology
In particular, read up on the different "Cycles" mentioned on the "Heat engine" article. The Otto cycle represents a "normal" gas/diesel engine. There is a rather hard theoretical limit at about 35%.
What we could hope for, is the Crower six-stroke engine, which potentially, after warm up, could end up on 50%. This is a very new design, and have problems with extremely rapid cooling that could crack the materials of the engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crower_six_stroke
HERETIC!!! Crucify him! BLASPHEMER!
The lithium, etc, does not go up in smoke, like gasoline. These things can be recycled. Of course initial demand would be large.
Any car can get 50-80 miles per gallon with ordinary gas.
You use a smaller engine and constantly variable gears and a turbo charger for those that want speed. The engine cuts off at stop lights and comes back on when you hit the gas. Under steady speeds, two cylinders cut out until you need more power.
You make the cars out of light weight materials and aerodynamic.
This technology is all THIRTY YEARS OLD.
The whole hybrid Bullshit is just another GREEN SCAM.
Love these type articles. Easily understood, and recognizable for everyday people.
Funny, rare earths seem to tied up totally in private equity.
If it is valuable, the investment is private. If it has no value, it is distributed on NYSE or NASDAQ.
The rare earths are numbered 57-71 on the periodic table.
They are, among other similar elements, the commodities that hold my interest.
theres a stock called thorium power that could easily be ramped, trading at 28c today i think...ive asked for some details from the company that is more than they put on their website or reported in the junkpapers
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.
This seems like a pretty silly post to me...more about identity politics than anything else. Yes, rare metals used in batteries will be consumed at a higher rate if that solution takes off. But, the market will adjust accordingly...isn't that what the folks at zerohedge believe? If the value proposition of the Prius is people feeling better about themselves, then good for Toyota. It's a great marketing/business move if it makes them money. A more insightful argument would be around what externalities the government should attempt to manage. Being a libertarian is a convenient cop out of the highest order. Libertarian tend to take the tact of assuming responsibility for nothing (especially leadership) while advocating responsibility as a personal imperative.
China is the largest producer of rare earth metals and is restricting export of those metals. The solution for the Western World is the horse drawn cart.
Hey moron, please keep your facts straight.
1) You don't "burn through" rare earths. That is one of the bigger problems with oil, remember? - the result is CO2 and global warming. (Don't argue against me on Global Warming - I don't argue with people having an IQ below 50. Seriously.)
2) These metals and other rare earths are, like e.g. aluminium, 100% recycleable. That's one of the other bigger problems with oil, remember? - it's a finite resource, in the way that you DO literally "burn through" it.
China are way ahead of the game:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/608246...
> if it's not one natural resource you're burning through- it's invariably another.
Forgive me for siding with the retarded tree-hugging lefties, but this statement is ignorant.
There's a whole spectrum of options between, say, using solar, which is available in more supply than we can use, and using chemical energy such as gasoline, which is available in limited quantities.
Heh. You know how much nickel goes into the steel to make a car? At least the nickel in a Prius' NiMH battery can be reclaimed as nickel, and used again. Of course, steel can be used again, too.
Let's give the "if you drive a Prius, you're killing the planet" crap a rest. And the "if you're NOT driving a Prius, you're killing the planet" crap, too. The human population long ago passed sustainability. What we're arguing now is not whether we'll hit the wall, but how hard we'll hit it.
Toyota Prius' battery uses 25 pounds of rare earth metals.
Travis,
have you seen the Financial Times piece on rare earth metals being banned from exporting to China...
This could be a very big deal very very soon.
The story in NYT: China currently accounts for 93 percent of production of so-called rare earth elements — and more than 99 percent of the output for two of these elements, vital for a wide range of green energy technologies and military applications like missiles.
They will restrict exports in order to make investors place their green technology factories in China. Smart move by the Chineese, who also have secured rights to mine for strategic minerals and metals all over Africa.
"Cash for Clunkers" was economic stimulus and had nothing to do with being green. The formula for acceptance removed recent drivable cars that would compete with the new car market. (The steel from the clunkers was of course shipped overseas.) The "need" for high mileage cars was driven by high fuel prices driven by (market manipulation by TARP recieving banks and) long commutes driven by selfish real estate interests that fought growth management. Although much has been made of the fuel wasted in one person auto trips, that amount pales to the 8% of total world energy going into nitrogen fertilizer alone, or the 3 years worth of driving fuel to build the average automobile. Technology in a small vehicle is a waste of money. On the other hand large "vehicles" like locomotive engines (2000+ horsepower) and ships use diesel-electric systems (NOT using non-rare earth magnets; using rare earth magnets is a size thing) because large mechanical transmissions waste more energy per unit power transmitted. Industrial batteries (secondary cells, rechargeable) were originally Edison cells using iron and nickel. (Mercury and Cadmium are what make older alkaline batteries toxic.) Single battery design? Lithium (rechargeable) contains the same energy per weight as Aluminum and Methyl Alcohol but much less than Natural Gas or Gasoline. Japan has had multi Megawatt fuel cells (primary battery) running on Natural Gas since 1993, ranging down to 1KW industrial units. Primary batteries are not limited by the second law of thermodynamics for conversion efficiency. They need to be hot to run. The amount of Platinum used would be similar to current catalytic converters, maybe less.
Those so called "rare earths" are not actually that rare (they were named when "gay" meant happy). The monzonite sand that covers beaches in India is an ore for rare earths (REEs) and also a source of Thorium for India's breeder reactors. Monzonite sand and other sources are found in states from Alaska to Arizona, Coal ash and mine tailings, and even granite and Mississippi river sediment contain REEs. The price reflects how difficult they are to extract from the ore. It IS chemically difficult to separate the individual component REEs and only China appears happy to poison its citizens with the pollution from sloppy separation processing. The amount of rare earth we use in magnets today is less than used as Misch metal in cigarette lighter flints. And that's dwarfed by the usage in steel manufacture. Oops, I forgot, the U.S. purposely destroyed its steel industry. No steel, no need for rare earth production.
Interesting that noone has commented on the use of "precious metals" as a hedge. In the last decades of "stability" Silver has tracked at about 1/50th of Gold and Platinum was 2x Gold and Palladium was 1/10th Platinum. And what if you bought Rhodium in june 08 for $9400/oz? Not that I'm a Lyndon LaRouche fan wanting to bring back the Bretton Woods system.