6 ms·

It’s electric. Technique could clean up mining of valuable rare earth elements

60 points by taubek 4y ago

SuoDuanDao 4y ago
link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00989-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00989-3 too recent to be in sci-hub, anyone know how their case is going?
kombai 4y ago
Idk for this technique, but generally speaking there is no such thing as green mining.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- lm28469 4y ago
  Just put a "green" and "electric" sticker on it and it becomes climate neutral, that's what we did with cars, it works
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    Well, it doesn't solve all the worlds problems, but generally if you can avoid nasty chemicals, it's a plus.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      This specific advance just uses less of the nasty chemicals, so in car analogy terms its like an efficient hybrid, but that still seems like a good thing. I assume all the people who hate anything that's not "perfect" are effectively concern trolling, even if its just coming from a genuine sense of dispair.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. It's only 'just a label' if you're ideologically opposed. Yes, the labels can be overused, but if the discussion is only going to be about labels, why even bother? The underlying facts are pretty easy to work with.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. Making an aberration 20% more efficient doesn't make it less of an aberration The rebound effect kills all these efficiency claims anyways, you're decreasing the effect per unit not the overall effect
      - Tade0 4y ago
        Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s along with the sharp increase in oil prices back then and has been in steady decline ever since. The only additional congestion you're seeing is due to increased urbanization.
        lm28469 4y ago
        > Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s Yet there are more cars than ever: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicles-in-use-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicle... Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative At the end of the day you're displacing 70kg of meat with 2+ tonnes of metal, electric or not it's an aberration also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
        elihu 4y ago
        > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative I'm pretty sure that's not true, unless you're using some definition of "environmental impact" that puts very little weight on the climate impact of CO2 emissions from burning petroleum.
- schmichael 4y ago
  Greenhouse gasses are an existential threat to life as we know it on earth. Mining is not. I hate what mining has done, but am heartened to see progress being made toward less dirty resource extraction.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    existential?
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    I think 'existential' is a bit overused with respect to fossil fueled global warming. Full-scale nuclear war, or a major asteroid impact, would be existential. The rise in temperature and associated issues like extreme weather (droughts/floods/storms), sea level rise, the loss of permanent glaciers are serious issues but the timeline is slow enough (10 years per noticeable change) that adaptation is quite possible, to some extent. Indeed adapatation is absolutely required, as we've tipped the system such that even if we halt fossil fuel use overnight, or (more plausible) over the next 50 years, permafrost melt, shallow ocean sediment warming, etc. will continue to leak ancient carbon into the atmosphere. We're heading back to climate conditions last seen in the Pliocene (3-5 million years ago), like it or not. As far as mining, yes, it can be made cleaner but that just costs at least twice as much (because you have to spend as much on processing the waste and cleaning up the water as you do on developing the mine). The answer to that is tighter regulations, so that a dirty miner can't undersell a clean miner.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      I think you're underestimating the impact that climate change will have, most importantly from human migration, food shortages, and war (which are secondary impacts of climate change, as opposed to the primary impacts you've listed). But I also think you've underestimated the primary impacts: you're assuming that the rate of change is stable, and it's absolutely not.
      - photochemsyn 4y ago
pfdietz 4y ago
In the long term, the element that presents the biggest drive on mining will be phosphorus. It's needed for fertilizer and is not substitutable. It is present in the Earth's crust at an average abundance by mass of 0.1%. 100 million tonnes of phosphate fertilizer are applied every year. The abundance by mass of REEs in the crust is about 20% that of phosphorus, so byproduct extraction of REEs during this asymptotic "mine average rocks" phase could be an order of magnitude above the rate of current consumption.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  One would hope in the long term we could figure out how to stop polluting waterways with it and depleting the soil and just use what can be cycled or concentrated by organisms whilst still getting adequate yields. Sadly it will probably take a mass famine or three for that to happen.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Robot vision that allows you to precisely target individual plants and therefore allow mixed crops to be grown in the same field rather than rotate monocrops is an interesting current research area. Generally also promises less "spray and pray" application and so less run off.
- schmichael 4y ago
  There are some… unorthodox… approaches in development for phosphorus extraction: https://phys.org/news/2019-12-technique-recover-phosphorus-urine.amp https://phys.org/news/2019-12-technique-recover-phosphorus-u...
  - pencilguin 4y ago
    That used to be the main method. England had piss-collectors who took wagonloads for processing.
yrgulation 4y ago
Endless resources lying around in space yet we keep digging here.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Resources yes, but are there any proved reserves? (i.e. economically mineable)
- _Algernon_ 4y ago
  And until it is economically feasible with space mining that will remain true.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Obviously if we tried to rely on this only right now we'd all starve but i hope in 500 years people look back at the idea of removing a mountain or digging a pit into the earth and subsequently destroying the ecosystem of these places to recover the minerals within with the same kind of baffled outrage that we might have today for someone who casually pours used motor oil into a swimming pool.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Rare earth elements are enriched by about a factor of 100 in the Earth's crust compared to chondritic abundances (undifferentiated asteroidal material.) Like uranium, the best place to mine REEs in the solar system may be Earth.
  - pencilguin 4y ago
    Wondering why we don't just call them "lanthanides"...
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Rare earth elements = lanthanides + yttrium, scandium.
      - 4y ago
schmichael 4y ago
The first season of the How We Survive podcast is all about lithium mining in the western US and a fantastic overview of its history, importance, and ongoing efforts if you’re interested in resource extraction for the green economy more broadly. Mining is basically necessary to do anything about climate change, and it’s so encouraging to see progress made on doing it more cleanly.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Rare earth elements are not absolutely necessary for clean energy applications. They're generally cited as necessary for electric motors and turbines, but there are equally efficient work-arounds: https://eepower.com/news/eliminating-rare-earth-elements-in-electric-motors/ https://eepower.com/news/eliminating-rare-earth-elements-in-... > "Electric motors can also be made without using permanent magnets. An induction motor (also called a synchronous motor) operates on alternating current and uses electromagnetic fields produced by the stator (stationary) windings to induce a current in the rotor that produces an opposing magnetic field. By rotating the current around the stator windings, the rotor is induced to turn." Once that's eliminated (i.e. eliminating the need for strong permanent magnets), rare earths are only used in quite specialized applications: https://www.thoughtco.com/rare-earth-metals-2340169 https://www.thoughtco.com/rare-earth-metals-2340169
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Another potential substitute for permanent magnets is tetrataenite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite It was recently discovered that FeNi relaxes to this phase much more quickly in the presence of ~1% phosphorus. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36281692/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36281692/
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    Also recently seen is the commercialization[1] of Fe16N2, which appears to have suitable characteristics as well. [1] https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ https://www.nironmagnetics.com/
  - pencilguin 4y ago
    335 vs 512 for neodymium-iron-boron. Enough to be useful.
- abakker 4y ago
  This is true but also useless. AC synchronous motors cannot be easily substituted for Permanent Magnet DC motors in all use cases. BLDC motors with permanent magnets are drastically more energy dense and are easier to control. We've had AC Synchronous motors for a long time, but there is a reason that cordless drills have only been really good for a decade - BLDC motors. Likewise with drones, hoverboards, etc.

60 points by taubek 4y ago

link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00989-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00989-3 too recent to be in sci-hub, anyone know how their case is going?

kombai 4y ago

Idk for this technique, but generally speaking there is no such thing as green mining.

dr-detroit 4y ago
lm28469 4y ago
Just put a "green" and "electric" sticker on it and it becomes climate neutral, that's what we did with cars, it works
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  Well, it doesn't solve all the worlds problems, but generally if you can avoid nasty chemicals, it's a plus.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    This specific advance just uses less of the nasty chemicals, so in car analogy terms its like an efficient hybrid, but that still seems like a good thing. I assume all the people who hate anything that's not "perfect" are effectively concern trolling, even if its just coming from a genuine sense of dispair.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. It's only 'just a label' if you're ideologically opposed. Yes, the labels can be overused, but if the discussion is only going to be about labels, why even bother? The underlying facts are pretty easy to work with.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > Except we can back up the effect electrification has on transportation. Making an aberration 20% more efficient doesn't make it less of an aberration The rebound effect kills all these efficiency claims anyways, you're decreasing the effect per unit not the overall effect
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s along with the sharp increase in oil prices back then and has been in steady decline ever since. The only additional congestion you're seeing is due to increased urbanization.
      - lm28469 4y ago
        > Distance travelled per driver peaked in the EU and US in the early 00s Yet there are more cars than ever: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicles-in-use-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281134/number-of-vehicle... Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative At the end of the day you're displacing 70kg of meat with 2+ tonnes of metal, electric or not it's an aberration also: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...
        elihu 4y ago
        > Even if you were right you'd make my point, we use them less but have more of them, since ~50% of a car's environment impact is done before it even leaves the factory, you end up with a net negative I'm pretty sure that's not true, unless you're using some definition of "environmental impact" that puts very little weight on the climate impact of CO2 emissions from burning petroleum.
schmichael 4y ago
Greenhouse gasses are an existential threat to life as we know it on earth. Mining is not. I hate what mining has done, but am heartened to see progress being made toward less dirty resource extraction.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  existential?
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I think 'existential' is a bit overused with respect to fossil fueled global warming. Full-scale nuclear war, or a major asteroid impact, would be existential. The rise in temperature and associated issues like extreme weather (droughts/floods/storms), sea level rise, the loss of permanent glaciers are serious issues but the timeline is slow enough (10 years per noticeable change) that adaptation is quite possible, to some extent. Indeed adapatation is absolutely required, as we've tipped the system such that even if we halt fossil fuel use overnight, or (more plausible) over the next 50 years, permafrost melt, shallow ocean sediment warming, etc. will continue to leak ancient carbon into the atmosphere. We're heading back to climate conditions last seen in the Pliocene (3-5 million years ago), like it or not. As far as mining, yes, it can be made cleaner but that just costs at least twice as much (because you have to spend as much on processing the waste and cleaning up the water as you do on developing the mine). The answer to that is tighter regulations, so that a dirty miner can't undersell a clean miner.
  - SECProto 4y ago
    I think you're underestimating the impact that climate change will have, most importantly from human migration, food shortages, and war (which are secondary impacts of climate change, as opposed to the primary impacts you've listed). But I also think you've underestimated the primary impacts: you're assuming that the rate of change is stable, and it's absolutely not.
    - photochemsyn 4y ago

pfdietz 4y ago

In the long term, the element that presents the biggest drive on mining will be phosphorus. It's needed for fertilizer and is not substitutable. It is present in the Earth's crust at an average abundance by mass of 0.1%. 100 million tonnes of phosphate fertilizer are applied every year. The abundance by mass of REEs in the crust is about 20% that of phosphorus, so byproduct extraction of REEs during this asymptotic "mine average rocks" phase could be an order of magnitude above the rate of current consumption.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
One would hope in the long term we could figure out how to stop polluting waterways with it and depleting the soil and just use what can be cycled or concentrated by organisms whilst still getting adequate yields. Sadly it will probably take a mass famine or three for that to happen.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Robot vision that allows you to precisely target individual plants and therefore allow mixed crops to be grown in the same field rather than rotate monocrops is an interesting current research area. Generally also promises less "spray and pray" application and so less run off.
schmichael 4y ago
There are some… unorthodox… approaches in development for phosphorus extraction: https://phys.org/news/2019-12-technique-recover-phosphorus-urine.amp https://phys.org/news/2019-12-technique-recover-phosphorus-u...
- pencilguin 4y ago
  That used to be the main method. England had piss-collectors who took wagonloads for processing.

yrgulation 4y ago

Endless resources lying around in space yet we keep digging here.

HPsquared 4y ago
Resources yes, but are there any proved reserves? (i.e. economically mineable)
_Algernon_ 4y ago
And until it is economically feasible with space mining that will remain true.
idiotsecant 4y ago
Obviously if we tried to rely on this only right now we'd all starve but i hope in 500 years people look back at the idea of removing a mountain or digging a pit into the earth and subsequently destroying the ecosystem of these places to recover the minerals within with the same kind of baffled outrage that we might have today for someone who casually pours used motor oil into a swimming pool.
pfdietz 4y ago
Rare earth elements are enriched by about a factor of 100 in the Earth's crust compared to chondritic abundances (undifferentiated asteroidal material.) Like uranium, the best place to mine REEs in the solar system may be Earth.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Wondering why we don't just call them "lanthanides"...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    Rare earth elements = lanthanides + yttrium, scandium.
    - 4y ago

schmichael 4y ago

The first season of the How We Survive podcast is all about lithium mining in the western US and a fantastic overview of its history, importance, and ongoing efforts if you’re interested in resource extraction for the green economy more broadly. Mining is basically necessary to do anything about climate change, and it’s so encouraging to see progress made on doing it more cleanly.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Rare earth elements are not absolutely necessary for clean energy applications. They're generally cited as necessary for electric motors and turbines, but there are equally efficient work-arounds: https://eepower.com/news/eliminating-rare-earth-elements-in-electric-motors/ https://eepower.com/news/eliminating-rare-earth-elements-in-... > "Electric motors can also be made without using permanent magnets. An induction motor (also called a synchronous motor) operates on alternating current and uses electromagnetic fields produced by the stator (stationary) windings to induce a current in the rotor that produces an opposing magnetic field. By rotating the current around the stator windings, the rotor is induced to turn." Once that's eliminated (i.e. eliminating the need for strong permanent magnets), rare earths are only used in quite specialized applications: https://www.thoughtco.com/rare-earth-metals-2340169 https://www.thoughtco.com/rare-earth-metals-2340169

pfdietz 4y ago
Another potential substitute for permanent magnets is tetrataenite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite It was recently discovered that FeNi relaxes to this phase much more quickly in the presence of ~1% phosphorus. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36281692/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36281692/
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Also recently seen is the commercialization[1] of Fe16N2, which appears to have suitable characteristics as well. [1] https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ https://www.nironmagnetics.com/
- pencilguin 4y ago
  335 vs 512 for neodymium-iron-boron. Enough to be useful.
abakker 4y ago
This is true but also useless. AC synchronous motors cannot be easily substituted for Permanent Magnet DC motors in all use cases. BLDC motors with permanent magnets are drastically more energy dense and are easier to control. We've had AC Synchronous motors for a long time, but there is a reason that cordless drills have only been really good for a decade - BLDC motors. Likewise with drones, hoverboards, etc.