News Highlights:
Rare Earth Elements in Sweden: Recently, Sweden’s state-owned mining company LKAB discovered Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth metals.
Rare Earth Elements:
- About:
- Rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table:
- The 17 Rare piles of the earth are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y).
- Properties:
- These minerals have unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties and thus are used in many modern technologies.
- Significance:
- They are essential in technologies of consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, clean energy, advanced transportation, healthcare, environmental mitigation, and national defence, among others.
- REEs have become more important because the demand for green energy has increased.
- Elements like neodymium and dysprosium, used in wind turbine motors, are sought-after more than ever as windmills worldwide continue to grow.
- There is push for switching from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles has also led to a rise in demand for rare earth magnets — made from neodymium, boron, and iron — and batteries.
- Applications:
- Scandium is used in televisions and fluorescent lamps
- Yttrium is used in drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.
- Rare earth elements are also used in space shuttle components, jet engine turbines, and drones.
- Cerium, the most abundant rare earth element, is essential to NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme.
- Moreover, the push for switching from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles has also increased demand for rare earth.
- Other applications in technologies of consumer electronics, computers and networks, Communications, Clean energy, Advanced transportation, healthcare, Environmental mitigation, National defence, etc., use rare earth metals.
Rare Earth Minerals Reserves in India:
- India’s reserves:
- India has the fifth-largest reserves of rare earth minerals worldwide.
- India has 6% of the world’s rare earth reserves. It only produces 1% of global output and meets most of its requirements of such minerals from China.
- Geologically the entire landmass around the Indian Ocean contains rare earth element in the surrounding rocks.
- Monazite sand is the principal source of thorium.
- Rare earth elements contribute a total value of nearly $200 billion to the Indian economy.
- Due to the radioactivity of monazite sands, Indian Rare Earths Ltd, under the Department of Atomic Energy, is the sole producer of rare earth compounds.
- Exploration:
- Exploration in India has been conducted by the Bureau of Mines and the Department of Atomic Energy.
- Mining and processing have been performed by some minor private players in the past but are today concentrated in the hands of IREL (India) Limited (formerly Indian Rare Earths Limited), a Public Sector Undertaking under the Department of Atomic Energy.
- India has granted government corporations such as IREL a monopoly over the primary mineral that contains REEs: monazite beach sand, found in many coastal states.
- IREL produces rare earth oxides in low-cost, low-reward upstream processes, selling these to foreign firms that extract the metals and manufacture end products,high-cost, high-reward downstream processes elsewhere.
- IREL’s focus is to provide thorium — extracted from monazite — to the Department of Atomic Energy.
- Strategic Importance:
- Rare earth minerals are very crucial for India in order to reduce the energy burden.
- It is an important component in manufacturing hybrid vehicles, fuel cells and LEDs.
- It is indispensable in the manufacture of advanced defence equipment.
- Essential for purifying the rivers flowing across the country.
- It is used to manufacture mobile phones, computers, digital networks, optical fibre cables and other IT gadgets, which would help in our Digital India programme.
Pic Courtesy: Freepik
Content Source: The Indian Express