Rare Earth Resources

Rare earth resources mainly exist in China, Northern America, Russia, India and Australia as mineral forms in nature. The most common minerals are bastnasite and monazite, both of them are rich in light rare earth. Xenotime and ion-adsorption clay minerals are the major source for heavy rare earth, especially in ion-adsorption clay minerals, which are only found in the south of China.

Rare Earth Production

Rare Earth elements are all very similar as there is little difference in the outer electron configuration, so their separation is difficult, there are two principal methods for separating Rare Earth chemicals, solvent extraction and ion exchange, purities up to 99.999% can be obtained with either technique.

Rare Earth metals are generally produced by vacuum calciothermic reduction of a Rare Earth salts, usually as fluorides or as chloride. For Samarium, Europium, Ytterbium and Thulium, which due to their low boiling points are distilled in argon atmosphere. Electrolytic techniques may also be used to produce the Lanthanum, Cerium, Praseodymium, Neodymium and Mischmetal. This technique is cost effective only at relatively large production volumes. Re-melting and multi-distillation are also applied for the production of high purity Rare Earth metals.

China: Over the past fiveyears China has increased its dominance of the world market, supplying an estimated 85-95% of world demand in 2001. It is estimated that China mined ores with a contained Rare Earths content of 75,500 tons REO (compared with a global production equivalent to 85,900 tons REO), exported 47,000 tons REO of Rare Earth concentrates, chemicals and metals and satisfied domestic demand of 19,200 tons REO.

USA: USA once was the leading supplier of Rare Earths in the world, but with the emergence of Chinese low-price Rare Earths products in late1980s and the environmental concerns, USA has almost stopped its Rare Earths production and become one of the major importers of Chinese Rare Earth products.

CIS: The proven reserve is reported only about 6 million ton REO, furthermore it is in complex Rare Earth minerals with low Rare Earth contents, which is difficult to separate. After the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, the well-established Rare Earths production facilities are located in different CIS countries with very small quantity of production.

Australia and India: They have monazite resources recovered as a byproduct of heavy minerals of ilmenite and zircon, but the production of Rare Earth products is limited due to the high content of radioactive elements (Thorium and Uranium) in monazite.