3 ms·
The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any
by philipkglass 9y ago
The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any terbium or dysprosium. Additions of those expensive, almost-exclusively-China-produced rare earth elements have been how neodymium magnets are made suitable for high-power, high-temperature applications in motors and generators. Neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum are more common rare earth elements that have more good mineral resources outside China.
Most wind turbines use electromagnets in their generators, plus gearing systems. So-called "direct drive" turbines use high strength permanent magnets and can have longer lifetimes since the gearbox is the fastest-degrading part of conventional turbines. But turbines with permanent magnet generators have been only a minority of the market, in part because affordable and assured supplies of key heavy rare earth elements are not available outside China. (Goldwind, the only wind turbine manufacturer presently with an all-direct-drive lineup, is Chinese.) Powerful magnets with less need for rare materials can improve wind turbines to charge EVs as well as motors to move them.
- shaqbert 9y agoWhile innovation to substitute an expensive ingredient from a potentially unreliable supplier is laudable, from a chemist/metallurgist point of view I wish there was more innovation in mining and cleaning up the process of getting rare earth in the first place. Every rare earth element increases option value and the potential to make further progress. The main reason rare earth are expensive is that they mining is done in decades old tech fashion, and dirty as hell. China does not seem to mind as much, as long as it is controlling a strategic resource. Finding higher concentration deposits, and improving the process of extracting the rare earths elements is something I wish to happen more of...
- greendesk 9y agoI also hope for innovation in the mining business. This also seems to be underserved niche for start-up companies. From miners that I have talked with, this is a small-moving enterprise setup.
- perilunar 9y agoThe real innovation in mining is coming from companies like Planetary Resource and Deep Space Industries.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoThose are moonshot companies; if they work they'd have the potential to bring in trillions worth of minerals from space, but before they get there they'll probably require hundreds of billions of investment first. Plus they'd destabilize the market.
- bdamm 9y agoNo doubt this innovation will occur once cheap and dirty mining practices are banned globally. Until then, any slightly more expensive and clean method has to compete with the cheap and dirty, and in the mining business, that makes you non-competitive fast.
- yread 9y agoWow dysprosium is literally unobtainium: > On succeeding, he named the element dysprosium from the Greek dysprositos (δυσπρόσιτος), meaning "hard to get". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysprosium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysprosium (sorry for OT)