Wat er werkelijk wordt vervoerd
Heavy rare earths do not come from a conventional orebody. They come from weathered granite where the metal ions cling loosely to clay, and they are recovered by washing a salt solution through the hillside. The grade is tiny; the strategic weight is enormous.
- Het materiaal
- Dysprosium
- De variëteit
- Ion-adsorption clay, very low grade, unusually rich in heavy rare earths
- Waar het begint
- China — Weathered granite hills in Jiangxi, Guangdong and Fujian
Stap voor stap, en grens voor grens
China · Jiangxi and Guangdong in beheer bij State-consolidated producers (Staatsproducent)
Leaching the hill in place
Ammonium sulfate solution is injected into the weathered granite and collected downslope. The rare-earth ions swap places with ammonium on the clay and come out in solution. Nothing is blasted and, in modern practice, little is dug.
Wat er met de rest gebeurde: Older, uncontrolled in-situ leaching left serious groundwater and slope-stability damage, which is much of why the industry was consolidated under state control.
Waarom hier: This deposit type needs a specific granite, a specific climate and millions of years. It is not a matter of looking harder elsewhere.
China · On site in beheer bij Producers (Chemisch)
Precipitating a mixed carbonate
The pregnant solution is precipitated into a mixed rare-earth carbonate — the intermediate everything downstream starts from.
Waarom hier: Concentrating before transport, as always.
China · Ganzhou, Jiangxi in beheer bij China Rare Earth Group and affiliates (Raffinaderij)
Separating the heavies
Solvent extraction, but far harder than for the light rare earths: dysprosium, terbium, holmium and erbium are even more alike than neodymium and praseodymium, so it takes more stages and more patience.
Wat er met de rest gebeurde: Terbium, yttrium, gadolinium and the rest come out alongside. Yttrium is by far the largest fraction; dysprosium and terbium are the ones everyone actually wants.
Waarom hier: Heavy separation capacity is concentrated here to a degree unmatched by any other material in this atlas.
China · Magnet plants in beheer bij Magnet manufacturers (Fabrikant)
Diffused into a magnet's grain boundaries
Rather than alloying dysprosium throughout the magnet, it is painted on and diffused into the grain boundaries where it does the most good. The technique cut dysprosium use per magnet several-fold.
Wat er met de rest gebeurde: This is substitution by engineering rather than by chemistry — same performance, a fraction of the scarce element.
Waarom hier: Grain-boundary diffusion is a process advantage held by a small number of manufacturers.
Germany · Traction motors and turbines in beheer bij Motor manufacturers (Fabrikant)
A motor that can get hot
Without dysprosium a neodymium magnet begins losing strength around 80 °C. A traction motor or a turbine nacelle routinely runs hotter than that. 15 kg is enough for several thousand car motors.
Waarom hier: A few kilograms of a metal from a Chinese hillside is what lets an electric motor survive a summer traffic jam.
Dit is een uitgewerkt voorbeeld. Het volgt een opgegeven beginhoeveelheid door gepubliceerde typische opbrengsten en rendementen, zodat de verhoudingen controleerbaar zijn; het is geen verslag van een concrete zending. Routefeiten — welke landen, welke processen, en waarom het materiaal niet zomaar elders kan worden verwerkt — zijn samengesteld uit openbare bronnen.