Yutaro Takaya, Kazutaka Yasukawa, Takehiro Kawasaki
Koichiro Fujinaga, Junichiro Ohta, Yoichi Usui, Kentaro Nakamura, Jun-Ichi Kimura, Qing Chang, Morihisa Hamada, Gjergj Dodbiba, Tatsuo Nozaki, Koichi Iijima, Tomohiro Morisawa, Takuma Kuwahara, Yasuyuki Ishida, Takao Ichimura, Masaki Kitazume, Toyohisa Fujita, Yasuhiro Kato
2018 · Scientific Reports
Abstract Potential risks of supply shortages for critical metals including rare-earth elements and yttrium (REY) have spurred great interest in commercial mining of deep-sea mineral resources. Deep-sea mud containing over 5,000 ppm total REY content was discovered in the western North Pacific Ocean near Minamitorishima Island, Japan, in 2013. This REY-rich mud has great potential as a rare-earth metal resource because of the enormous amount available and its advantageous mineralogical features. Here, we estimated the resource amount in REY-rich mud with Geographical Information System software and established a mineral processing procedure to greatly enhance its economic value. The resource amount was estimated to be 1.2 Mt of rare-earth oxide for the most promising area (105 km 2 × 0–10 mbsf), which accounts for 62, 47, 32, and 56 years of annual global demand for Y, Eu, Tb, and Dy, respectively. Moreover, using a hydrocyclone separator enabled us to recover selectively biogenic calcium phosphate grains, which have high REY content (up to 22,000 ppm) and constitute the coarser domain in the grain-size distribution. The enormous resource amount and the effectiveness of the mineral processing are strong indicators that this new REY resource could be exploited in the near future.
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3 selected excerpts · 3 total mentions
To quote from the 2018 Nature article: "During these cruises, Rare Earth Yttrium-rich mud having a maximum of almost 8,000 ppm of total REY content (ΣREY) was confrmed." 8000 ppm would be 0.8% concentration. Most of the samples are poorer than that. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5.pdf
As a side note: I'm very curious to see what softbank[1] does, they've made an impressive list of investment and Japan generally is in an interesting position[2]. [1] https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/vision-fund-101-inside-s... // [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5.pdf //
Ref: The original study published in Nature "The tremendous potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth elements" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23948-5
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