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Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

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Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#41
post #25

The article is vague about the identities of the elements. They tend to occur together, but some are way more valuable than others. Cerium, for example, is considered a "rare earth" but is not that rare at all: > Cerium is the most abundant of all the lanthanides, making up 66 ppm of the Earth's crust; this value is just behind that of copper (68 ppm), and cerium is even more abundant than common metals such as lead…

A sibling comment [1] cited additional details that the find is indeed mostly cerium, followed by lanthanum which also has limited economic value.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31993668

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#42
post #25

The article is vague about the identities of the elements. They tend to occur together, but some are way more valuable than others. Cerium, for example, is considered a "rare earth" but is not that rare at all: > Cerium is the most abundant of all the lanthanides, making up 66 ppm of the Earth's crust; this value is just behind that of copper (68 ppm), and cerium is even more abundant than common metals such as lead…

Honest question. What is the distribution throughout the crust though? If something that is 66 ppm but near uniformily distributed could be much harder to extract then something that is 2.2 ppm but occurs I distinct viens.

[deleted]

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, 46 tons would hardly ever be news, that's about the output of a medium-sized mine per minute .

That’s astonishing. I clearly don’t have any type of intuition for the amount of earth these mines are extracting, because the number you’re putting out there seems comical.

Indeed. Check this -> https://www.grida.no/resources/11419

The volumes involved are huge!

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#45
post #38

Strange article. Economy in the dump. 75% inflation rate rendering everyone's money useless. Great time to "discover" a massive stockpile of hard assets.

Take any ‘motherlode discovery’ announcements with a grain of salt - whether it’s gold, rare earth or diamonds.

They’re almost certainly exaggerated, and are often announced to satisfy investors with a healthy - temporary - uptick in stock price.

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#47
post #34

Looking at some of the concentrations for neodymium and praseodymium... why _isn't_ magnet recycling more of thing? Certainly extracting those elements from waste is cheaper than raw ore.

How do you collect enough rare earth magnets to be worth recycling them? I don't mean where do you find that many magnets, I mean how do you store, transport and then process them. You'd have to demagnetize them first, right? It doesn't seem like the temperature requirements are outside of something one could do with pretty low end hardware, but the problem is that a lot of the equipment you might have to say do this…

I would have though it would far easier to find magnets in a massive pile of trash than pretty much anything else.

They stick to metal.

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of old (5-15 yrs old) HDD hard drives in a closet. Would that help? I don't know what to do with them.

I took mine out and use them as refrigerator magnets. They are awesomely strong. No more cheap magnets sliding down the refrigerator not holding weight. Edit: Daughter really liked using the shiny platters in art projects (after degaussing with the RE magnets). I've reused some of the dc motors in other projects (arduino type stuff). All that's left is the small circuit board, read/write head and metal body to recycl…

Bear in mind that some of your more elderly relos might have heart related hardware that might be damaged by a strong magnetic field. Luckily ... inverse squared law. You are probably safe if you recommend that granddad (1) doesn't rub his chest on your fridge.

I have loads of the bloody things - I dismantled a Equallogic PS6something that had 30 odd discs in it for recycling the other day. I, sorry: "we" still have four more old Eqls and a stack of discs removed from old PCs. You can break the case of a 3.5" disc with a lump hammer and cold chisel and then unscrew or break out the magnets quite quickly. I need to look into breaking a 2.5" disc. You could speed things up with a bandsaw with a suitable blade and a careful cut.

(1) I'm called Granddad by two little girls, so let's ditch the ageist bollocks (po faced emoji). How about great granddad instead! My dad does sport a heart restart device (I can't remember the name) and it is probably not going to work very well after close contact with a neodymium magnet that nearly tore off one of my fingernails - OK I nearly did the tearing but it was the vice that did the holding with my fridge.

[edit - formatting]

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#49
post #48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took mine out and use them as refrigerator magnets. They are awesomely strong. No more cheap magnets sliding down the refrigerator not holding weight. Edit: Daughter really liked using the shiny platters in art projects (after degaussing with the RE magnets). I've reused some of the dc motors in other projects (arduino type stuff). All that's left is the small circuit board, read/write head and metal body to recycl…

Bear in mind that some of your more elderly relos might have heart related hardware that might be damaged by a strong magnetic field. Luckily ... inverse squared law. You are probably safe if you recommend that granddad (1) doesn't rub his chest on your fridge. I have loads of the bloody things - I dismantled a Equallogic PS6something that had 30 odd discs in it for recycling the other day. I, sorry: "we" still have…

It’s actually inverse cube for magnets - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_between_magnets : “One characteristic of a dipole field is that the strength of the field falls off inversely with the cube of the distance from the magnet's center.”

Re: Turkey Discovers 694M Mt of Rare Earth Element Reserves

#50
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you collect enough rare earth magnets to be worth recycling them? I don't mean where do you find that many magnets, I mean how do you store, transport and then process them. You'd have to demagnetize them first, right? It doesn't seem like the temperature requirements are outside of something one could do with pretty low end hardware, but the problem is that a lot of the equipment you might have to say do this…

I would have though it would far easier to find magnets in a massive pile of trash than pretty much anything else. They stick to metal.

I think you're confusing 'magnet' with 'magnets so strong they create plasma when they collide with each other'. If you manage to put them into a bin, they will Voltron into an even more obnoxious magnet.

And that's not counting all of the ferrous things in your equipment that it can stick to and cause damage by friction or backing things up into something that isn't designed for back pressure.

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