REE Rare Earth Elements in Australia

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REE Rare Earth Elements in Australia :
REEs the 15 Rare Earth Elements +Scandium +Yttrium +Lutetium


Why Are REE's Different?
Listing of Rare Earth Elements Australia
Challenges to REE mining and extraction
Four (often overlapping) geological environments:
Some Australian Possibilities
Processing of REE's
REE Economic Considerations
Sources



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Why Are REE's Different?


All of the REEs, except promethium, are more abundant on average in the Earth’s crust than silver, gold, or platinum. However, concentrated and economically minable deposits of REEs are unusual.
Found as REO (rare earth oxides) end-use markets (catalysts, glass industry, metallurgy excluding battery alloy, and phosphors) consume mainly cerium (45 percent), lanthanum (39 percent), and yttrium (8.0percent) oxides.
Dysprosium, gadolinium, neodymium, and praseodymium oxides and other REO's contribute the remaining 7.0 percent of total REOs consumed in these sectors.


Generally, atom radii get larger as atomic numbers increase due to the attachment of electrons to the outer shell, however, REEs display decreasing atom radii with the increase of atomic numbers. This phenomenon is known as lanthanide contraction.

So REEs have in general a greater amount of reactive area making them ideal for ...catalysts /anodes ; light-weight super-strong magnets, as colour phosphors for LEDs / display screens, as abrasives and energy converters.

REE resources in Australia
REE  Map Australia



Listing of RE Rare Earth Elements in Australia






Note: REO (rare earth oxides) are reported by companies as ...
TREO (total rare earth oxides) + yttrium oxide (Y2O3)


Challenges to REE mining and extraction...


Four (often overlapping) geological environments:


--> carbonatites
--> alkaline magmas
--> placer deposits
--> ion-adsorption clay deposits

1. Carbonatites are mostly emplaced in continental extensional settings and range in age from Archean to recent.
Coexisting with alkaline silicate igneous rocks they form alkaline-carbonatite complexes, but also occur as isolated pipes, sills, dikes, plugs, lava flows, and pyroclastic blankets.
These cone sheets, ring dikes, radial dikes, and fenitisation-type halos (advancing alteration by CO2 carbon dioxide) carbonatites are the premier source for light rare earth element (LREE) deposits.
LREEs consist of La, Ce, Pr, and Nd of which Nd and Pr are particularly marketable.
In carbonatite melts, which are either directly mantle-derived or immiscible from silicate melts, alkalis and LREEs concentrate in the residual melt due to their incompatibility in early crystalising minerals. In most carbonatites, additional fractionation of calcite or ferroan dolomite leads to evolution of the residual liquid into a mobile alkaline “brine-melt” from which primary alkali REE carbonates can form.


REE's in Carbonatites

2. Alkaline magmas are rare and unusually enriched in elements such as zirconium, niobium, strontium, barium, lithium, and rare earth elements. Their formation is complex and not fully understood but derived through small degrees of partial melting of rocks in the Earth's mantle. Further changes in response to variations in pressure, temperature, and composition of surrounding rocks result in mineral deposits quite diverse and awkward to classify

3. Placer Deposits - concentrations of heavy minerals in old and recent fluvial (river) systems or sand islands subject to coastal long-shore drift

4. Ion-adsorption clay deposits in southern China are the world’s primary source of heavy REEs.Thick clay accumulations that host low concentrations of REEs (from about.04 to 0.25 percent total REE oxides) form in tropical regionswith moderate to high rainfall through successive processes:
  1. REEs are leached by groundwater from granite bedrock;
  2. thick zones of clay-rich soils develop above the granites; and
  3. mobilized REEs become weakly fixed (by ion-adsorption) onto clays in the soils. Despite their low concentrations in REEs, the clay depositsof south China are economic because the REEs can be easily extracted from the clays with weak acids.


Common REE usus in Society


Some Australian Possibilities...

Processing of REEs


Rare earth elements-bearing mineral concentrates may contain many different REEs that must be further separated and refined. This required dozens of physical / chemical techniques and processes. Due to the required high degrees of concentration , deleterious radioactive Thorium and/or Uranium is an impurity that create problems both in handling and in waste mamagement.
The current average recovery rate in the industry is 50-60% .
Other methods involve...


REEs in Cars

REE Economic Considerations

Because REE are generally found together, for many REEs, production exceeds demand and will for the foreseeable future.

Cerium is a good example of the fact that not all rare earth demand is equivalent.
When you produce Dysprosium, you are always producing much more cerium than Dysprosium. That doesn’t mean that there is a market for Cerium. In fact, it is more correct to say that some Cerium/Lanthanum/Neodymium deposits contain recoverable Dysprosium.

There are four or five critical REEs that each have individual markets. One of them is neodymium, because it’s the most important REE used in permanent magnets. The others are heavy rare earth elements (HREEs), including Europium, Terbium, Dysprosium and Yttrium. The latter isn’t really an REE, but it’s associated with them.

The big issue in magnets is the HREE (heavy rare earth element) Dysprosium.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any production of Dysprosium from outside of China.

Another country of supply would be beneficial. Dysprosium is already in short supply.
Some hard rock Dysprosium is found in the Kimberley of Western Australia with the benefit of added Terbium – both marketable In a world of climate change the abundance and useful properties of by product Cerium for UV absorption, water purification, pigment and photo-sensitive glass could be the subject of innovative research.
For REEs it is pretty well a necessity to value add with on-shore processing.
Further value adding through the development and manufacture of small-size, low weight, high value REE containing components would certainly broaden of economic base of Australia.

Sources:

https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-resources-and-advice/australian-resource-reviews/rare-earth-elements    REE map of Australia
https://d28rz98at9flks.cloudfront.net/130434/130434_00_1.pdf

https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/elements/article/17/5/327/611057/Formation-of-Rare-Earth-Deposits-in-Carbonatites

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25726838.2018.1516935
     carbonatite REE deposits image
https://geology.com/usgs/ree-geology/
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3078/pdf/fs2014-3078.pdf
https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf

https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/greenrefining.html

https://americanresources.org/what-the-auto-industry-rare-earth-elements-have-in-common/
     car image