[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
…

 

>…A very small speaker that, considering how tiny it is, sounds amazingly good thanks to rare earth magnets. Also, you can thank rare earth magnets for the haptic vibration feedback that all modern phones have. And Europium displays the red hues you see on your screen and Yttrium produces the green. And although Indium isn't a rare earth it is a rare metal, and almost all of it comes from, you guessed it, China. And without Indium you wouldn't have a touch sensitive screen because Indium Tin Oxide is one of the very few solid substances that is both electrically conductive and optically transparent. 

 

John K Clark

 

 

Of course to all, but the electronics industry doesn’t need much material.

 

We can easily estimate it however.  My cell phone has a mass of 224 grams.  I can’t imagine REEs are more than 10% of that, so say 25 grams per cell phone.  Imagine 300 million cell phones that are replaced without recycling on the average about every 3 years, so about 100 million cell phones per year.  I don’t know what fraction of those are American made, but AI is very helpful in saying almost none.  OK, scratch that notion.

 

Let us look at cell phones made outside of China.  AI says it as about a third.  OK then.  Let us assume China stops exporting phones and we get them from outside China and we need 100 million a year and each one contains about 25 grams of REEs.  Scratch that, AI says about 1% of a cell phone is REE.  So, 2.5 grams each, times 100 million phones, 250 tons a year.  Trivial.  Recycle a few wind turbines or a submarine for a coupla years until Mountain Pass is producing everything we need.  Don’t worry about the cost of the material, if a 1000 dollar phone uses 2.5 grams of the stuff.  The highest spot price I saw was about 1800 a kg, so we are looking at 5 dollars worth of material assuming the most expensive of the REEs.

 

Again, the REE problem is grossly exaggerated (possibly at least in part for political or economic considerations (such as to run up the stock price in Mountain Pass (which I would cheer for if I owned any of that stock (or opposition to tariffs (which I also oppose (but not for that REE reason (rather because free trade is inherently a good thing (it lifts the masses out of poverty.)))))))

 

spike

 

 

 

 

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