The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - September 11, 2024
The Pentagon estimates that each F-35 fighter contains roughly 900 pounds of rare earths, including terbium-enhanced neodymium iron boron magnets.
Toward achieving its mission to establish reliable and secure supplies of minerals critical to national security, the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded Nebraska-based Rare Earth Salts $4.22 million to advance its technology to recover terbium from recycled fluorescent light bulbs.
"This award adds a domestic source for one of the most difficult-to-obtain rare earth elements," said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Laura Taylor-Kale.
The reason terbium is so difficult to obtain is that, on average, this element makes up only about 1% of naturally occurring rare earths, making it amongst the scarcest of the suite of 15 tech elements.
However, this rare earth metal is vital to many industrial and military applications due to its ability to boost the temperature resiliency of neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) magnets used in aircraft, electric vehicles, submarines, missiles, wind turbines, and other heavy-use applications.
Communications equipment, guidance and control systems, lasers, and precision guidance munitions are among the military applications that leverage the unique properties of terbium.
Terbium also has green fluorescence properties that have long been used in televisions, computer displays, and fluorescent light bulbs. These everyday applications offer a potential source of this scarce rare earth.
Utilizing a patented formula developed by founder Joseph Brewer, Rare Earth Salts has developed commercial processes to recover terbium and other rare earths from recycled fluorescent bulbs.
"The need for securing both domestically sourced rare earth elements and domestic rare earth element processing infrastructure is critical," Brewer said during an August 2023 announcement that Rare Earth Salts had achieved commercial production at its Nebraska plant. "In an industry that has not seen viable refining innovation in more than three-quarters of a century, we are proud of our proprietary, cost-effective and environmentally friendly way for the separation of rare earth elements."
This environmentally friendly process makes Rare Earth Salts one of the only companies outside of China with the capacity to produce terbium.
"Rare Earth Salts' capability will help the United States establish a mine-to-magnet supply chain without reliance on foreign sources of material," said Taylor-Kale.
At the same time, Rare Earth Salts will be recovering lanthanum, cerium, europium, and yttrium, each with their own military and industrial applications, at its 50,000-square-foot facility in Nebraska.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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