Group items tagged

We show that deep-sea mud contains high concentrations of rare-earth elements and yttrium at numerous sites throughout the eastern South and central North Pacific. We estimate that an area of just one square kilometre, surrounding one of the sampling sites, could provide one-fifth of the current annual world consumption of these elements.

The rare earths high iron aluminum alloy material, developed by the company, mixes aluminum and some special materials, for example, rare earths to change the physical properties, which results a non-ferrous materials “revolution". The alloy cable enjoys three advantages, such as performance, it shows 35% more of percentage elongation,50% more of resisting fatigue strength, 40% less of inverse elasticity, 10 more years of service life and stronger antioxidant and corrosion resistance than those of copper wire, because of rare earths element added in conductor and better insulating material; safety, it is contributed to adding the patent fire retardants so that the alloy cable can still function for light even on fire; and cost, 40% less than that of copper wire.

A feature of ABB's latest SynRM2 motors is that they do not utilise rare earth permanent magnets. Instead they use ferrite magnets, which are more cost effective and easily available.

Usually when cable is stolen the insulation, which could be used to identify the owner, is burnt off the cable just leaving the copper conductor. In contrast to more complex and expensive tagging techniques such as those using rare earth elements, Nexans’ CORE-TAG® solution involves installing a coded fire-resistant copper tape that is intertwined in the conductor.The dot-matrix markings on the coded tape – typically identifying the owner (RFF in this case) – make it easy to trace the origins of the stolen copper when it is brought to a scrap dealer, even after the insulation has been burnt off.

The growing global demand for minerals and rare earth elements in the recent years, coupled with declining resources on land has got stakeholders interested from across the world to explore the lucrative mineral resources beneath the surface of the seas and invest in deep sea mining.

Nick Davis reports from Jamaica, which is home to the organisation which controls the new industry.

build electric motors for a hybrid vehicle platform due in three years

To the extent that a (gasoline) engine is core, these motors will be core

GM opened its own battery pack manufacturing plant last year because it considers that technology, too, to be core to its strategy.

Three types of risk The expert group put together by the Commission has already identified three types of risks: Import risk, where raw materials are imported from a politically instable region or from a country where the market economy does not work. "That is relatively easy to do as the World Bank has put together governance indexes which measure the political and economic stability index of countries," the EU official explained.    Production risk within the EU, with potential problems such as land access. "If we are in a country for example where the population density is very high, where urbanisation is very high, obviously access will be weak," the EU official explained. Environmental risk, based on indicators such as air or soil pollution, where the impact of raw materials use is measured from an environmental point of view. "This is innovative compared to other studies," the EU official said. "We have just launched a life-cycle analysis to determine what the environmental impact is for each raw material in terms of exploitation, use, treatment, recycling etc., for air or soil pollution as well as emissions of greenhouse gases."