Comments on: Implications For Investors Of The Dramatically Increasing Chinese Virtual Demand For Rare Earths

By: prescient11

prescient11 — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:40:13 +0000

Thanks for the heads up Eamon.

By: Eamon Keane

Eamon Keane — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:19:37 +0000

For anyone who is still interested, I emailed the guy who did the life cycle analysis in conjunction with Toyota who confirmed that the Prius-II battery uses mischmetal. There is also this extract from Rhodia and Umicore’s plan to recycle REEs from Ni-MH batteries (euronext.com/fic/000/064/994/649944.pdf):

“The main use of nickel metal hydride batteries is in rechargeable AA and AAA batteries (typically used in domestic applications such as cordless phones, toys and games), power tools and hybrid electric vehicles. A typical NiMH battery will contain some 7% of rare earth
elements including cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and praseodymium. This equates to some 1 gramme of rare earth for a AAA battery, 60 grammes for a household power tool and 2 kilogrammes for a hybrid electric vehicle battery.”

By: Eamon Keane

Eamon Keane — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:40:36 +0000

@ Peter Vesborg

No worries, I completely don’t blame you for internalising the 10 – 15 kg, it has been repeatedly quoted in the ether and in official reports for the past two years, as has the 1 kg of neodymium in a Prius.

The DOE’s recent report seems to have taken a more rigorous approach, so check out slide number 14 here (tremcenter.org/index.php?option=com_attachments&task=download&id=33), it has material intensity for wind turbines and vehicles, giving the neodymium content of a hybrid/EV as between 0.31 and 0.62 kg and the REO content of NiMH batteries (La, Ce, Nd, Pr) as between 1.5 and 2.2 kg.

By: Boris

Boris — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:14:45 +0000

@Eamon
If material really ended in Prius I don’t know, since my “end user” was Sanyo. And Peter’s reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius ) says battery comes from Panasonic. I assume Toyota would not have only one source anyway.
And another detail – I was using approx 75La15Ce5Nd1Pr “mischmetal” as RE carrier, not pure metals.

By: Peter Vesborg

Peter Vesborg — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:28:41 +0000

@Eamon Keane, Boris and Jack.

Thanks for the updates on the numbers. I knew I was (perhaps) oversimplifying by exchanging Mischmetal and Lanthanum, but since Ce and La cost about the same these days it makes little difference.

The big difference is comes from your usage figure: That a NiMH battery needs only 2.7-2.9 kg (Eamon-Boris figures) to make the ca. 1.5 kWh battery in the Prius. In other words about 1.9 kg “La”/kWh.
Good info.

Btw. the 15 kg La/Prius is floating around all over the net, which is why I did not double check (see e.g. wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius ).

—
I’d agree with Jack that supply uncertainty might be even worse than price runups – either way it doesn’t change the conclusion: Demand destruction. Would you agree?

By: robit

robit — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:05:52 +0000

Mr. Lifton
In trying to straighten out a certain fund manager and rare earth expert, I borrowed from a short history you had written on the Great Western purchase of it’s Michigan facility from Energy Conversion Devices. Just out of curiosity, have you ever met Stan Ovshinsky and discussed his early involvement with Baotou and ECD’s ree processing?

By: Eamon Keane

Eamon Keane — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:01:57 +0000

Thanks Jack and Boris, good info.

I know that the Prius uses a Sanyo battery, and one of Sanyo’s MSDS sheets mention several REs (mkbattery.com/documents/4574SANYO%20NiMH%20MSDS.pdf):

“There is potential for exposure to iron, nickel, cobalt, rare earth metals (cerium, lanthanum neodymium, and praseodymium), manganese, and
aluminum fumes during fire; use self-contained breathing apparatus.”

Here’s Sigma Aldrich’s take on it:

“Another situation is the replacement or partial substitution of La in the nickel metal hydride (Aldrich Prod. No. 685933) battery by mischmetal (a metallic mixture of the naturally occurring rare earth ore—50% Ce, 25% La, 15% Nd, 4% Pr). In both cases there is some reduction of the performance of the magnet or the battery, but the properties are still sufficient for some applications.”

Boris, were these automotive batteries you were dealing with?

By: Boris

Boris — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:48:55 +0000

@Peter&Eamon
Couple of years ago chem analysis of electrode material for NiMH was 7.5 Mn, 1.2 Al, 3.2Co, 56.75Ni, 24.44 La, 4.7 Ce, 1.6 Nd and 0.5 Pr (all wt%, balance was oxygen and carbon as impurity). Assuming numbers from rechargebatteries.org – 35 kg whole battery, 8.8 kg electrode only (or 7% of RE in battery) this yields around 2.15 kg La, 0.41 kg Ce, 0.14 kg Nd,…etc, per battery. In standard procedure you have to do vacuum induction melting, heat treatement, crushing and milling (all these with some 95% efficiency). In powder form then material is sold to battery maker. Rough (!) estimation of selling price is sum of all metals prices x 2.

By: jjl2u

jjl2u — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 22:51:45 +0000

Poncho, very good points indeed, imo. GWM is looking to be a serious, vertically integrated player in the LREE and HREE field in the not too distant future from what I can tell. Many, if not most of the others, are wanna’-be’s, with hoped for production in the 2015/16 time frame and beyond (sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to me.) Whereas, if GWM hits a sweet spot production wise, from mine to market, I can see them adding assets, resources, expanding, and quite possibly emerging from the little engine that could, to perhaps an 800# Gorilla in the field, we’ll see. Hmmm, back in the 70’s and early 80’s, nobody had really even heard of Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc., but now they are significant players, if not dominating in key areas of their fields. I wouldn’t be surprised if GWM went from relatively obscure, to center stage as well, within their field, only time will tell, but I like their chances.

By: PONCHO 462

PONCHO 462 — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:58:43 +0000

Don Ellwood…GWMG is on schedule and beginning actual construction/refurbishment this week, all permits in hand, to bring Steenkampskraal to actual shipping concentrate to GWMG subsidiaries LCM and GWTI for vertically integrated value add refining, smelting, and purification in 18 months. When will Quest be accomplishing this milestone of full production at the much higher tonnage levels you quote?