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Markets and Prices
Published in John E. Tilton, Juan Ignacio Guzmán, Mineral Economics and Policy, 2016
John E. Tilton, Juan Ignacio Guzmán
Examples of commodity markets that have just one seller (monopoly, monopoly with oligopsony, and bilateral monopoly) or just one buyer (monopsony, monopsony with oligopoly, and bilateral monopoly) are hard to find today. Some would argue that in the case of the rare earth minerals China was until recently a monopolist or nearly a monopolist with over 95 percent of world production. There are also some examples from the more distant past. The aluminum market before World War II was divided into the North American market, where Alcoa was for many years the sole producer, and the European market, where Pechiney and Alusuisse were the only two suppliers. Today, of course, the two markets have long since merged into a global market and the number of producers has multiplied many fold. Similarly, for a time after World War II the uranium industry was a monopsony, with the US government the sole buyer.
What instead of oil?
Published in Rauli Partanen, Harri Paloheimo, Heikki Waris, The World After Cheap Oil, 2014
Rauli Partanen, Harri Paloheimo, Heikki Waris
The biggest problems with EVs are the low power density and high price of the batteries. Since 2012, there have been an increasing number of EVs on the market. Their driving distance on one charge is usually below 200 km, and perhaps only 100 km with cold and demanding circumstances. This causes anxiety for many. When the battery alone represents maybe 10,000 euros in the price of the car, EVs are not very competitive. Many governments have seen it necessary to offer rebates to EV buyers. The manufacturing demands many rare earth minerals that have limited production capacity globally. This also puts limits on how many electric cars we can produce globally, no matter what their demand is. In theory, the global production capacity for lithiumion batteries would be sucked up by just a few hundred thousand Tesla Model S electric cars produced per year. In real life, this is not even possible.129
Wave energy converter systems – status and perspectives
Published in Dezhi Ning, Boyin Ding, Modelling and Optimization of Wave Energy Converters, 2022
Robert Mayon, Dezhi Ning, Boyin Ding, Nataliia Y. Sergiienko
Notwithstanding the challenges to the commercialisation of wave energy outlined above, harvesting energy from ocean waves has many advantages over other forms of renewable energy [132]. In contrast with both wind and solar power, it is a relatively constant source of energy with comparatively little temporal variation. Solar power plants cannot operate at night-time, and during overcast days they do not operate efficiently. Wind power faces the same problems with regards to temporal variability in wind speeds. Solar power-plants require large tracts of land to install photovoltaic arrays, often up to 4 hectares per MW [811]. Onshore wind turbine arrays also require vast areas of land. Modern onshore wind turbines have an average capacity of about 2 MW and a rotor diameter of about 100 meters. The turbines are usually spaced at a minimum of 6 rotor diameters from each other in the streamwise direction and 4 to 5 rotor diameters in the cross-wind direction [795]. This necessitates an extensive land area for the installation of a wind turbine array. Photovoltaic arrays require the mining of rare earth minerals, which has a significant, detrimental environmental impact. Furthermore, construction of solar power plants and onshore wind farms are often opposed by local residents, as they can have a negative visual (and sometimes auditory in the case of wind farms) impact on the landscape and its ecology, a phenomenon referred to as the “not in my backyard (NIMBY)” effect [832]. Additionally, whilst offshore wind turbines generate significantly more power than their onshore counterparts, they are significantly more expensive to install and maintain. Most of these listed disadvantages associated with other forms of renewable energy are relatively minor for WEC devices.
Collector Chemistry for Bastnaesite Flotation – Recent Developments
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 2019
Weiping Liu, Xuming Wang, Jan D. Miller
The rare earth minerals are mainly concentrated by gravity, magnetic, electrostatic, and froth flotation separation techniques. The typical gravity separation of rare earth minerals is found in the beneficiation of monazite from heavy mineral sands which is based on the differences in specific gravities (Gupta and Krishnamurthy 1992). Furthermore, gravity separation equipment, such as shaking tables, spiral concentrators, and conical separators, is used together with froth flotation in many rare earth separation plants in China. Magnetic separation is a common unit process to remove highly magnetic invaluable minerals, such as Fe-bearing minerals, or to concentrate paramagnetic rare earth minerals, such as monazite or xenotime (Gupta and Krishnamurthy 1992). Electrostatic separation is mainly used to separate monazite and xenotime from invaluable minerals with similar specific magnetic and gravity properties and to concentrate ultrafine coal particles containing rare earth elements (Higashiyama and Asano 1998). Froth flotation, which is the main separation technology for bastnaesite, as reviewed in this paper, is commonly used in Bayan Obo, China, and Mountain Pass, United States (Liu et al. 2016).