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How much ore is available at these conventional rare earth mining sites I wonder? Even with a 30x lower yield it may be that we have 100x more easily mined coa
by evgen 9y ago
How much ore is available at these conventional rare earth mining sites I wonder? Even with a 30x lower yield it may be that we have 100x more easily mined coal. When it comes to the so-called rare earths my concern is more about the waste from the refining process than the yield. The press release mentioned 'environmentally-conscious' process, but that is the kind of weasel word that covers a variety of sins so I would need hard data.
- tomalpha 9y agoApologies for the nitpick, but I think you mean 300x and 1000x (90000g / 300g). I don’t know whether there’s 1000 times as much coal available as rare-earth ores, but it might skew the argument a little compared to 100x.
- evgen 9y agoYeah, conversion fail on my part. OTOH, I would not be surprised at all if the difference in known deposits was more than 1000x in favour of coal, if only because we have been looking for it for so long. 300-1000x does make process throughout and efficiency a bit harder to match though.