This is an unusual discovery and
will certainly put a serious lid on both prices and dreams about monopoly been
bantered out of China
We will see mud pumping to
possibly generate a concentrate. Since a
square kilometer is a serious piece of the market, supply issues are about to
disappear.
It may still be just too soon to
write off the present bull on these metals but it is certainly time to become
defensive.
Deep-sea mud in the Pacific Ocean as a
potential resource for rare-earth elements
Nature Geoscience
19 May 2011
World demand for rare-earth elements and the metal yttrium—which are
crucial for novel electronic equipment and green-energy technologies—is
increasing rapidly1, 2, 3.
Several types of seafloor sediment harbour high concentrations of these elements4, 5, 6, 7.
However, seafloor sediments have not been regarded as a rare-earth element and
yttrium resource, because data on the spatial distribution of these deposits
are insufficient. Here, we report measurements of the elemental composition of
over 2,000 seafloor sediments, sampled at depth intervals of around one metre,
at 78 sites that cover a large part of the Pacific Ocean .
We show that deep-sea mud contains high concentrations of rare-earth elements
and yttrium at numerous sites throughout the eastern South and central North
Pacific. We estimate that an area of just one square kilometre, surrounding one
of the sampling sites, could provide one-fifth of the current annual world
consumption of these elements. Uptake of rare-earth elements and yttrium by
mineral phases such as hydrothermal iron-oxyhydroxides and phillipsite seems to
be responsible for their high concentration. We show that rare-earth elements
and yttrium are readily recovered from the mud by simple acid leaching, and
suggest that deep-sea mud constitutes a highly promising huge resource for
these elements.
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