![]() Gluconobacter bacteria naturally produce organic acids. Some products might have just a thousandth as much.īut scientists are trying to develop better recycling approaches to reduce the need for mining more of these metals. A computer’s hard-disk drive, for instance, might contain just a few grams (less than an ounce) of rare-earth metals. And that effort may only recover a tiny amount of metal. It also uses a lot of heat - and thus a lot of energy. Rare-earth recycling tends to use hazardous chemicals, such as hydrochloric acid. In some ways, recycling rare earths from tossed-out items is about as challenging as extracting them from ore and processing them. Separating them out again can be very hard. Why? Often they have been blended with other metals. But a lot of rare-earth products are “not very recyclable.” Steel can just be recycled into more steel,” he says. “Copper wiring can be recycled into more copper wiring. A geologist, he works at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Yet today, only about 1 percent of the rare earths in old products get recycled, notes Simon Jowitt. In the United States and Europe, it’s standard to recycle from 15 to 70 percent of high-use metals, such as steel. Ondacaracola Photography/Moment/Getty Images Plus But once a product reaches the end of its life, retrieving those rare earths for new use can be challenging. Most of these magnets depend on rare earths for their power. ![]() If true, he says, that would be “huge.” Most electronics, including smartphones, contain magnets. Within 10 years, Nlebedim says, recycling could meet up to one fourth of the need for rare earths. (It’s run by Ames National Laboratory in Iowa.) He’s a materials scientist at the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute. Recycling is “going to play a very important and central role,” says Ikenna Nlebedim. Right now, for instance, the whole United States has just one active rare-earths mine.Īll of this explains why researchers are looking to recycle these metals. Another concern: China is nearly the only place where these metals are mined and processed. They’re also dirty and use toxic chemicals. Then companies must use a mix of physical and chemical processes to concentrate the metals and separate them out. ![]() So miners must excavate huge amounts of ore to get them. So satisfying our appetite for these metals won’t be easy. There are no good substitutes for most of the jobs that rare earths do. By 2040, experts estimate we’ll need up to seven times as much as we use today. That’s roughly 32 times as much as in the mid-1950s. In 2021, the world mined 280,000 metric tons of rare earths. These elements are also a gateway to a climate-friendly low- or zero-carbon future. They’re even in rechargeable electric car batteries. So do medical-imaging machines, lasers, high-power magnets, fiber optics and pigments. Unfortunately, these elements are so widely used and popular that someday soon we may not have enough of them to meet society’s needs.īecause of their special properties, these 17 metals have become crucial to high-performing computer screens, cell phones and other electronics. Our modern lives depend on metals known as rare earths.
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