Adonis Diaries

Rare heavy dirt?  Premium dirt? (Jan. 26, 2010)

You think you heard it all!  Advanced technologies such as mobile phones, flat screens, magnet, batteries, light bulbs, missiles, night vision masks, and telemetry equipment rely on heavy dirt natural chemical elements. 

There are 17 kinds of heavy dirt or chemical elements.  If you are interested in these natural chemicals, would you fetch me their names, where they are situated in the expanded Mendeleev table, and how they are used?  You may skip the prices: I am not in the market for dirt.

What I know are the following:

Dysprosium, in small quantities, can lighten magnet by 90%.  Heavy magnets of 5 tons are used on top of wind turbines (Aeolians).  The Danish manufacturer Vestas is the number one in that market; followed by the Chinese Goldwind.  One kilo of Dysprosium sells for $110 on the world market and increasing by the month.

Terbium can reduce by 80% the consumption of electric bulbs and are used in top of the line batteries for electric cars. One kilo of terbium sells for $400 on world market and going strong.

China is practically the sole exploiter of heavy dirt; it produces 120, 000 tons per year.  World’s reserve of heavy dirt is estimated at 22 million tons.

Over 50% of heavy dirt export from China is done illegally. The mafia mix “clean” heavy dirt with steel; a simple process retrieve the dirt.

In the 80’s, the USA exported 50% of world production of heavy dirt.  Currently, Congress is in arms: Congress wants to figure out substitutes for heavy dirt. Apparently, China cannot be submitted to colonial tactics of exploitations.

Most of the production is generated from 200 mines in North of Guangdong (Bayan Obo by Baotou).  One mine was operated for only 3 years.  Ten years later, nothing grew in lands downstream. It seems that nuclear contamination is far friendlier to nature than extraction of heavy dirt.  Dirt is removed and then stored in ditches; then highly concentrate acids are dowsed on the dirt to retrieve the rare heavy and light dirt elements.

Heavy dirt is an economic sector valued at $1.3 billion a year.

OSRAM, the manufacturer of new generation light bulbs and part of the German Siemens multinational, is considering diminishing its reliance on heavy dirt.

I presume that by the end of this decades China would have accumulated most of the rare minerals and become the major Nation for rare mineral reserves, clean and processed: no dirt please! Only heavy or light premium dirt allowed in.

If not for China, copper would be dirt cheap on the world market.  China is hoarding copper and copper prices soared.  What China is planning to hoard next?  China has accumulated most of the money and its economy is growing at 10% a year; it can buy whatever it wishes or wants.