Research and drilling by Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology claims to have found deposits of rare earth minerals in deep sea muds in the Pacific, much of it in international waters surrounding Hawaii.

According to Reuters, the Japanese agency found “the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 meters (11,500-20,000 ft) below the ocean surface at 78 locations.” “One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium.” The deposits, in international waters in an area stretching east and west of Hawaii, as well as east of Tahiti in French Polynesia, are estimated to contain 80- to 100 billion tons of rare earth elements which could be extracted by simple acid leaching.

A letter in the British journal Nature Geoscience gives a little more detail:

World demand for rare-earth elements and the metal yttrium—which are crucial for novel electronic equipment and green-energy technologies—is increasing rapidly. Several types of seafloor sediment harbor high concentrations of these elements. However, seafloor sediments have not been regarded as a rare-earth element and yttrium resource, because data on the spatial distribution of these deposits are insufficient. Here, we report measurements of the elemental composition of over 2,000 seafloor sediments, sampled at depth intervals of around one meter, at 78 sites that cover a large part of the Pacific Ocean. We show that deep-sea mud contains high concentrations of rare-earth elements and yttrium at numerous sites throughout the eastern South and central North Pacific. We estimate that an area of just one square kilometer, surrounding one of the sampling sites, could provide one-fifth of the current annual world consumption of these elements. Uptake of rare-earth elements and yttrium by mineral phases such as hydrothermal iron-oxyhydroxides and phillipsite seems to be responsible for their high concentration. We show that rare-earth elements and yttrium are readily recovered from the mud by simple acid leaching, and suggest that deep-sea mud constitutes a highly promising huge resource for these elements.

It remains to be seen if these very deep resources can actually be economically recovered.

See also:

China Controls Rare Earth Elements Supply

Rare Earths Resources in the US

Sierrita Mine is only U.S. source of Rhenium

Last month I wrote about how China controls about 97% of the rare earth market. Some uses of rare earth elements include liquid-crystal displays on computer monitors and televisions, fiber optic cables, magnets, glass polishing, DVD and USB drives in the computer, catalytic converters, and petroleum cracking catalysts, batteries (the Prius uses 10 pounds of lanthanum), fluorescent lights, missiles, jet engines, and satellites. In other words, these elements are critical to our high-technology world.

The United States has rare earth resources, but except for Mountain Pass, California, these resources are not being exploited.

The United States Geological Survey has just published an assessment of U.S. resources. The report, Scientific Investigations Report 2010–5220 (4.2Mb), maybe be downloaded free. For an introduction and links to sections of the report, go here.

The report includes an overview of the geology and mineralogy of rare earth element deposits and gives a description of each domestic prospect.

The USGS estimates that domestic reserves and inferred resources are about 1.5 million tons which is large compared to the peak domestic consumption (in 2007) of 10,200 tons.

If you are interested in this subject, take a look.

From time to time I will summarize new science research from recently published, or about-to-be published papers. Usually, notice of the research comes in the form of press releases from universities that are made available to the media. Although the Arizona Daily Star sometimes prints science stories, their selection of stories seems to be confined to reprints of AP articles. So here are some of the stories I didn’t see in the Star.

Most Egyptian pottery is undecorated, but during the New Kingdom, the period when Egypt was at the zenith of its power, a variety of pottery was elegantly decorated in a distinctive pale blue.

Most blue comes from copper, but “Copper-based pigments must be applied in thick layers and were added after firing, so they tended to flake off when an object was handled. Instead of copper, the colorant used on most of the blue painted pottery is cobalt, which was fired onto the pots.” Where did the cobalt mineral come from? “Generic Geologist” Jennifer Smith finds the source. See: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20426.aspx

A recent advance by Arizona State University researchers in developing nanowires could lead to more efficient photovoltaic cells for generating energy from sunlight, and to better light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could replace less energy-efficient incandescent light bulbs.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/asu-nak031810.php

Karl A. Gschneidner Jr., a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, today cautioned members of a Congressional panel that “rare-earth research in the USA on mineral extraction, rare-earth separation, processing of the oxides into metallic alloys and other useful forms, substitution, and recycling is virtually zero.” Rare-earth elements are critical components in the great majority of America’s high-tech commercial and military products. Yet the United States and other nations have ceded much of this alloying knowledge to China.