China seeks to boost market role in pricing of the strategic minerals

By Bloomberg (China Daily)

REE’s Rare Earth Elements

China’s first rare earths exchange started trading on Friday as the biggest producer of the elements seeks to increase the role of the free market amid criticism overseas for limiting exports.

Baotou Rare Earth Products Exchange in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region began trading europium oxide, praseodymium-neodymium oxide and cerium oxide, it said in a statement. The daily price movements of the contracts, denominated in yuan and for physical delivery, will be limited to a 6 percent range, except for the debut day, which allows for 15 percent, according to the exchange.

China is bringing exchange trading to rare earths as it consolidates miners and refiners of the group of 17 chemically similar elements used in products from smartphones to helicopter blades and hybrid-car batteries.

The trial comes after the World Trade Organization ruled against the country in the past week, agreeing with the US that limits on its exports violate trade rules.

“China wants to use its mineral resources in a sustainable way that maximizes the interests of all participants,” Peng Bo, an analyst at Huachuang Securities Brokerage Co, said by phone from Shenzhen on Friday. “A vibrant trading platform that helps regulate supply and demand can also deflect foreign criticism of the government’s heavy hand in the industry.”

China accounts for 90 percent of the world’s production of rare earths. A cut mining permits and imposed production and export quotas in 2007 to reduce pollution and conserve supplies. The export controls have soured relations with the world’s major users, including the US and Japan, and spurred investments in Australia, Malaysia and the US.

The opening-reference price of europium oxide was set at 4,000 yuan ($644) a kilogram, praseodymium-neodymium oxide was 320 yuan and cerium oxide 19.5 yuan, according to the Baotou bourse.

Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 fighter jet is among weapons that contain neodymium iron-boron magnets made using rare earth material from China, a US Defense Department study in 2011 showed.

China typically releases two export quota batches every year and, from time to time, makes purchases for government stockpiles when prices drop, Peng said.

A dispute-settlement panel at the Geneva-based WTO on Wednesday determined that China didn’t adequately justify imposing export duties and quotas.

The Association of China Rare Earth Industry will study details of the WTO report and evaluate its impact, Chen Zhanheng, a deputy general secretary at the association, said in a text message.

China is trying to promote six companies including Baogang Group and Aluminum Corp of China to lead acquisitions in the rare earth sector, Peng said.

The State Council in January also said it approved in principle Ganzhou city in the eastern province of Jiangxi setting up the largest rare earth group in southern China, under the Ganzhou Rare Earth Group, according to a National Business Daily report.

Rare earth bets becoming factor in wind turbine direct-drive generator startup investments

Published on September 23rd, 2011 | Edited by: Peter Wray American ceramics society

Boulder Wind Power, a maker of a direct-drive system with what’s been described as a low-speed permanent magnet generator for utility-scale wind turbines, announced that it had received $35 million in investment venture capital firm NEA and rare-earth producer Molycorp.

Molycorp’s involvement, presumably, is based on its insights to rare-earth markets and what they think will be the long-term role that rare earths will play in permanent magnets. The company had previously said it wants the company to be organized around a “mines-to-magnets” strategy. BWP’s news release says the investment “positions Molycorp to become the ‘preferred provider’ of rare earth magnets and/or alloys for wind generators using Boulder Wind Power’s innovative drivetrain technology.”

But BWP isn’t the only direct-drive startup, so I wondered, why is Molycorp interested in it?

For example Danotek, a high-speed permanent magnet innovator, also has been highly touted and nearly the same time BWP was getting its new investments, Danotek also was receiving a nice venture funding package from GE Energy Services, CMEA Capital, Khosla Ventures and Statoil Hydro.

A story over at the American Wind Energy Association’s blog perhaps provides some explanation about Molycorp’s involvement and how other investors are formulating their bets. The AWEA post contains comments from people involved with both start-ups, including Sandy Butterfield, BWP’s CEO and once the chief engineer for the Wind Technology section of the National Renewable Energy Lab. The payoff paragraphs in the AWEA story are

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the BWP PMG design is that its magnets are part of an axial flux air core machine which operates at relatively low temperatures and are made with a rare-earth metal called neodymium. More commonly, PMG magnets are part of iron core radial flux machines like Danotek’s, operate at relatively high temperatures and require a rare earth metal called dysprosium.

In very round numbers, Butterfield said, dysprosium sells – in today’s very constrained market dominated by China’s hoarding of its unique rare earth metal supply – for around $1,000 to $2,000 per kilo; neodymium sells for about $100 per kilo and is relatively more common.

…

Rare earth metal processing techniques used in China, Butterfield said, “are pretty environmentally detrimental. But, he said, “Molycorp has developed a closed loop system that is both efficient and environmentally friendly. Nothing comes out of it and their yield is much better.”

This assures BWP a secure domestic supply of neodymium while other PMG system makers must continue to pursue supplies of dysprosium, which, Butterfield said, “drives the price of high temperature magnets.”

Indeed, Molycorp is pretty overt in how it sizes up its business plans. On its website, the company notes

“While the US currently has no capacity whatsoever for production of NdFeB magnets and intermediate magnet materials (metals and magnet alloys), it does control one of the world’ s largest and richest rare earth deposits at the Mountain Pass, Calif., facility. … [P]lans are in place to bring the facility back into full production over the next couple of years. In addition, with appropriate federal assistance for research and development and capital costs, [Molycorp Minerals] is prepared to move forward to reestablish domestic manufacturing capacity for both intermediate magnet materials and finished NdFeB magnets on an expedited basis.

Butterfield predicts its costs of generating electricity could drop to $0.04 per kilowatt-hour with a PM generator system.

BWP and Danotek aren’t the only players in this field. For example, Siemens offers a low-speed PM system and  ABB has a high-speed PM system and claims on its website, “Our global, long-term supply agreements for magnet material secures capacity, availability and cost control.”

www.einsteinsurplus.com   www.sunulose.com   www.libriloop.com   www.corvusrecycling.com

As demand for high-tech devices grows, so does interest in recycling the esoteric metals that make them run. But challenges abound.

Writer Jessica Marshall
@marshalljessica

April 7, 2014 — Earbuds, touch screens, CFLs with a warm glow, rechargeable batteries and power windows: Most of us take these things for granted. When we do, we also take for granted a group of elements called rare earth metals, whose special electronic and magnetic properties make them a key component of many 21st century technologies. These 17 elements are actually plentiful enough — you probably have some in your backyard — but except for a few ore deposits, they are found in nature in low concentrations that make them difficult to collect. Since they are integral parts of cell phones, hard drives, hybrid cars, wind turbines and other products with skyrocketing demand, rare earth metals face soaring demand, too.

As recently as 2010, China produced about 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth elements. That year the country decided to limit exports, which drove prices through the roof.

“Prices of some rare earths rose by 2,000 percent and more,” says Jim Sims of rare earth mining company Molycorp, which recently reopened a shuttered rare earth mine in California. Rare earth element prices have since dropped and are now much less volatile — thanks in part to the opening or reopening of Molycorp mines and others around the world. Still, burned by this experience, corporations and countries are working to ensure themselves a sufficient stream of rare earths however they can.

One option being explored is recycling rare earth metals from used products. You might think it would be easier to recover rare earths from products than extract them from the ground, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Given the importance of these products to modern living, governments around the world are funding research to make recycling a more feasible option. Some companies are already finding it worthwhile.

Not Curbside

Recycling rare earth elements isn’t as easy as recycling glass or plastic — there are challenges at nearly every level.

For one thing, the elements are present in small amounts in things like cell phones. As parts get smaller, so do the amounts of material used. In a touch screen, for example, the elements are distributed throughout the material at the molecular scale.

“It’s actually getting much harder to recycle electronics,” says Alex King of the Ames Lab in Ames, Iowa, and director of the Critical Materials Institute — a U.S. Department of Energy–funded “Innovation Hub” focused on strategies for ensuring the supply of five rare earth metals identified by the government as critical. “We used to have cell phones where you could snap out the battery, which is probably the biggest single target for recycling. With smartphones, those things are built so you can’t get the battery out, at least not easily.”

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