Has Chemist Cracked America’s Rare Earth Supply Problem?
Posted by freedomforall 5 days, 19 hours ago to Technology
Excerpt:
"One flash is all it takes.
That’s how James Tour believes America can tackle China’s rare earth dominance.
All he needs is discarded electronics—of which the United States has mountains. And from these scraps, the Rice University chemist and nanotechnologist has pioneered a way to quickly extract rare earth metals.
“We can pull out one metal and then the next,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s really that simple.”
Tour’s solution is flash Joule heating: rapidly heating up the materials to thousands of degrees to vaporize the metals. Mixed with chlorine gas, the vapors turn into chlorides that emerge at different temperatures."
"One flash is all it takes.
That’s how James Tour believes America can tackle China’s rare earth dominance.
All he needs is discarded electronics—of which the United States has mountains. And from these scraps, the Rice University chemist and nanotechnologist has pioneered a way to quickly extract rare earth metals.
“We can pull out one metal and then the next,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s really that simple.”
Tour’s solution is flash Joule heating: rapidly heating up the materials to thousands of degrees to vaporize the metals. Mixed with chlorine gas, the vapors turn into chlorides that emerge at different temperatures."
This NEVER should have happened, and has led to the trade imbalances and Chinese monopolization of industries, ever since.
With those two issues, the US is screwed.
Maybe Trump can put us back on an even keel, but he's working against not individual companies, but the entire God-damned CCP.
According to Wikipedia, "The term "rare-earth" is a misnomer, because they are not actually scarce, but because they are found only in compounds, not as pure metals, and are difficult to isolate and purify."
I probably have a couple dozen old pc boards lying around here.
The question really becomes... How fast will we run out of the oldest stuff?
I am reminded that you can have a LOT of "garbage" of some type (Kudzu). But the minute someone figures out how to run a CAR on it. You will have shortages! LOL
Nitron magnetics is working pretty hard to make rare earths irrelevant in magnets. Their magnets are in production, but small. They have issues with size, and larger magents have to be bonded, losing a portion of their properties. We are working with them on proper motor/generator designs to leverage them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihMb4...
California has a vast deposit of Lithium and it just needs to be filtered out of the brine that is already being used a geothermal energy.
I agree that there would be a significant up front cost, but wouldn't that be considerably lower cost than mining half a mile or more below the surface in Yak-istan?
Adding 'computer' trash to recycling process now will give would result in a new surface 'mine' and constant stream for the future to feed this process.
How many million people have old non-working electronics in their closets today?
The article says America has a mountain of discarded electronics, but isn't that mountain scattered all over the land, which would add to the expense of recovering the metals?