Listening to an expert explaining that 'rare earth is not as rare as the name'

Rare earth elements are also called 'chemical vitamins' , when a small amount of this 'additive' will produce powerful effects in electronics: stronger magnets, electronic device screens. brighter, higher battery capacity thanks to rare earth.

If China stops supplying rare earth, the entire electronics industry will go back in the decade. Nobody wants to give up their smartphones to return to using old black and white bricks.

But the rare earth is not rare, it's just that name.

Rare earth mine.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) describes rare earths as 'more moderate '. They are not as much as silicon or iron, but still have the same amount of lead or copper. China owns a large amount of rare earth, but Brazil, Canada, Australia, India, the US and Japan all have rare earths.

Difficulties in refining rare earths (and also the reason they are given the name 'rare') lie in the fact that rare earths are not made into ore, but also with many other impurities . The chemistry of rare earth is on par with that of a sociable youth, anyone can pair; extracting rare earth from ore is like persuading a drunken friend to stop drinking to go home, a long and repressive process.

According to Eugene Gholz, a rare earth specialist and professor at the University of Notre Dame: ' Once you take the rare earth out of the ground, you find it difficult to be in the process of chemical treatment rather than the mining stage. .

Unlike the sweet words used to admonish a drunk friend, treat rare earth that requires strong acid and some radiation that can cause cancer. This is one of the reasons for many countries to produce rare earths for China, which has abundant labor and rare earth mines that are unaware of the environment.

China has also risen to first place in the list of rare earth producing countries. Between the 68s and 80s, a large amount of the world's rare earth came from Mountain Pass mines in the US. The factory closed in 1998 due to problems with toxic wastewater.

From the 90s on, Chinese people dominated the source of rare earths, but they also paid expensive environmental prices. In 2010, the Chinese government estimated the amount of hazardous waste that the rare earth industry discharged a year to 20 million tons. Data from many sources indicate that China accounts for 95% of the world's total rare earth production, but the USGS believes that the data are old, the number is now almost 80%.

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