Rare Earth Minerals Found Near Hawaii – A vast treasure trove of valuable rare earth minerals used in high-tech manufacturing has been found on the Pacific Ocean floor off Hawaii.
“The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometer (0.4 square mile) of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption,” said Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo.
Kato said the sea mud was especially rich in heavier rare earths such as gadolinium, lutetium, terbium and dysprosium.
“These are used to manufacture flat-screen TVs, LED (light-emitting diode) valves, and hybrid cars,” he said.
Extracting the deposits requires pumping up material from the ocean floor. “Sea mud can be brought up to ships and we can extract rare earths right there using simple acid leaching,” he said.
“Using diluted acid, the process is fast, and within a few hours we can extract 80-90 percent of rare earths from the mud.”
The discovery was made by a team led by Kato and including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.
They found the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 11,500-20,000 feet below the ocean surface at 78 locations. One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Kato said in a telephone interview.
The deposits are in international waters in an area stretching east and west of Hawaii, as well as east of Tahiti in French Polynesia, he said.
Kato estimated rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion tons, compared to global reserves currently confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey of just 110 million tons.
Details of the discovery were published in the online version of British journal Nature Geoscience.
And that’s the latest news update on Rare Earth Minerals Found Near Hawaii.
Tags: Hawaii, pacific ocean, rare earth, rare earth minerals, Rare Earth Minerals Found Near Hawaii