The Geography of the REE
As a last step in this work the initial picture of a Geography of the REE shall be drawn. The initial idea was to get a world map with the locations of REE starting from the geological side, i.e. the physical occurrences of the minerals and then proceedin
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The Geography of the REE
As a last step in this work the initial picture of a Geography of the REE shall be drawn. The initial idea was to get a world map with the locations of REE starting from the geological side, i.e. the physical occurrences of the minerals and then proceeding via the production steps to manufacturing of the consumer products to their use. Eventually the REE get back into the production cycle or end up dissipating or getting stored somewhere. This map would of course get a good idea about the recycling potentials, both in space and time. However the analysis of this work could only discover a modest share of Nd use so that such a map in this state of research can only be very approximate and incomplete. Despite these shortcomings such a map has been tried to set up; kind of as a starting point with the intent to amend the data in the succession of further research. The graph (Fig. 7.1) shows a world map with the population densities in the center. The populated areas are these where potentially REE are widespread used. So they offer the most promising areas for sales, recycling, dissipation, storage and also research. On the outer border a schematic life cycle chain of the REE is shown starting lower left with mining (neglecting exploration etc.), followed by the complete cycle until the REE are finally dissipated, turned back into another cycle or get stored somewhere, under controlled or uncontrolled conditions. As well the thought may arise that they get lost during recycling when other metals are primary recycling objects. On the lower right side there are red squares indicating 1,000 t each of (probably) mined Nd (in oxidic form). The orange colored squares indicate the measured and researched shares that were found in this work. It is very obvious that these four areas only comprise a modest share of all the Nd produced. So the informational dilemma gets clear. Either the production data are very false or there actually is a huge grey number of applications and uses which are not obvious. They are of utmost importance and ask for more transparency and thus further research. The squared letters indicate where the products are dispersed over the globe. This only gives a rough qualitative and very rough quanitative picture. It would be of interest to detail the areas further down to more restricted geographical areas. V. Zepf, Rare Earth Elements, Springer Theses, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35458-8_7, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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Fig. 7.1 A geography of the REE—a first approach
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The Geography of the REE
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Thus potential quantities for recycling could be determined. Of course also other geographical issues could then be revealed, e.g. if there is the required infrastructure in place to collect the products up to the determination of necessary incentives for the people to return their old and used products for Re-phasing. Today there is an obvious agglomeration of all life cycle areas in China and the Far East. Especially the REPM based
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