Given their name and their criticality status, Rare Earths (RE) must be rare, right? Not really! Despite their name, there are actually abundant RE sources spread around the world. However, one country – China – dominates the mining and refining of Rare Earths globally.
In recent years, Europe, which has great need of these materials to advance its green and digital transition, has made progress within the area of technologies that are able to separate, re-process and recycle RE magnets, though it is still far from able to meet existing demand on its own.
Therefore, one of the objectives within the REEsilience project is to diversify supply and reduce the overall dependence on Rare Earth Elements from foreign monopolies.
To this end, partners from the REEsilience consortium under the lead of partner TUD are working on a mapping of availability, prices and quantity development of different RE sources with non-Chinese origin, using available data from literature, industry as well as expert interviews.
The resulting detailed inventory includes virgin materials as well as REE from European non-conventional sources such as coal and coal by-products or iron ore tailings, apatite, fertilizer and phosphate by products and REE from secondary sources. Several maps have now been developed showing REE deposits by type, size and quality worldwide and in Europe.
Based on the data from the inventory, a system dynamics model is then developed to further assess possible future developments in supply and demand as well as possible price development.