实际流转的物质
This is the most-crossed border in the atlas. Rare-earth ore is mined in one country, chemically opened in a second, separated into individual elements, turned into metal and alloy in a third, made into a magnet, and only then fitted into a motor. Mining rare earths outside China solves the first step of five.
- 材料
- Neodymium
- 品种
- Weathered carbonatite concentrate, high in neodymium and praseodymium
- 起点
- Australia — Mount Weld, a 2-billion-year-old volcanic pipe whose top has been rotted by weathering into a natural concentrate
逐步追踪，逐境跨越
Australia · Mount Weld, Western Australia 持有方 Lynas Rare Earths (矿业公司)
Mining a natural concentrate
Open-pit mining of deeply weathered carbonatite. Weathering has already done much of the concentrating work over geological time.
为何选择此地: Carbonatite pipes are rare, and ones with a thick weathered cap are rarer still.
Australia · Mount Weld concentrator 持有方 Lynas Rare Earths (矿业公司)
Flotation to a concentrate
Milled and floated to a mineral concentrate at roughly 40% rare-earth oxide.
其余部分的去向: 980 tonnes of tailings, on site, in Australia.
为何选择此地: Concentrate at the mine, always.
Malaysia · Fremantle to Kuantan, Malaysia 持有方 Lynas Malaysia (精炼商)
First border crossing
Concentrate is shipped to Malaysia, where the plant that cracks it was built.
为何选择此地: The cracking and separation plant was permitted and built here rather than in Australia — a decision about chemistry, cost and permitting that took years and remains contested.
Malaysia · Kuantan, Pahang 持有方 Lynas Malaysia (化学品)
Cracking it open with acid
Roasted with concentrated sulfuric acid to break the mineral apart, then leached. Thorium and uranium that came with the ore have to be separated and managed here.
其余部分的去向: The radioactive residue is the reason this step is hard to permit anywhere, and the reason so few countries have it.
为何选择此地: Because someone was willing to build it and see it through.
Malaysia · Separation plant 持有方 Lynas Malaysia (精炼商)
Hundreds of stages to tell them apart
Solvent extraction through hundreds of mixer-settler stages, exploiting differences in ionic radius so small they are almost invisible. Out come separated oxides: neodymium-praseodymium, lanthanum, cerium.
其余部分的去向: Cerium and lanthanum come out too, in larger quantities than anyone wants them. Surplus light rare earths are the industry's structural problem.
为何选择此地: This is the hardest step in the chain and the one with the fewest operators worldwide.
China · Metal and alloy plants 持有方 Metal and magnet makers (制造商)
Oxide to metal to alloy
The oxide is reduced to metal by molten-salt electrolysis, then strip-cast with iron and boron into a rapidly-quenched NdFeB alloy ribbon.
为何选择此地: Metal-making capacity outside China is very small. This is the step a Western mine cannot yet route around.
China · Ningbo or Ganzhou 持有方 Magnet manufacturer (制造商)
Making the magnet
Hydrogen decrepitation, jet milling to a few microns, pressing in a magnetic field to align the grains, sintering, machining, and a nickel-copper-nickel coating so it does not corrode. Dysprosium or terbium is diffused into the grain boundaries so it survives heat.
其余部分的去向: Machining swarf is recycled internally — magnet scrap is one of the few genuinely closed loops in this industry.
为何选择此地: Roughly 30% of a sintered magnet's mass is rare earth. This is where the ore finally becomes a component.
Germany · Motor and vehicle plants 持有方 Motor and vehicle manufacturers (制造商)
Into a traction motor
1.6 tonnes of magnet is on the order of two thousand car traction motors, or the generator of a single large offshore wind turbine.
为何选择此地: Four countries, three oceans, five processing steps — from one tonne of Australian rock to the thing that makes an electric car move.
本文为示例演算，以公开的典型产率和回收率对既定起始量逐步推算，各比例可供核验；这不是某批具体货物的记录。路线事实——途经哪些国家、经历哪些工序，以及为何该材料不能在其他地方简单处理——均来源于公开报道。