The name “rare earth” does not mean these metals rarely occur in the Earth’s interior. Some of them are found even more often than copper, lead, or tin, but their concentration at individual sites makes industrial mining commercially unprofitable. In nature rare earths occur predominantly in a dispersed state — along with other metals they are part of diverse minerals from which it is practically impossible to isolate the needed REE.
Today only 2–3% of all rare-earth elements used are obtained from the Earth’s crust; the rest are extracted from waste of mineral fertilizers, including phosphates. Difficulty of mining rare earths leads to even a small amount of them in production significantly increasing the cost of the final product. Meanwhile REE do not necessarily have to be in the composition of the product the consumer receives. For example, there are no rare-earth elements in gasoline, but cerium and lanthanum catalysts are used to produce it, and their price is included in the cost of the finished product.
In total 17 rare-earth elements are known — 15 lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium. In Dmitry Mendeleev’s table of chemical elements they are located under numbers 57 to 71, as well as under numbers 21 and 39. They all have similar physical-chemical characteristics, including:
Despite the similarity of rare-earth elements to one another, each occupies its own technological niche. For example, neodymium (Nd) and samarium (Sm) are most often used to create permanent magnets; europium (Eu), terbium (Tb), and dysprosium (Dy) — for luminescent light sources; gadolinium (Gd) — for optical and magnetic recording.
As technologies develop, world consumption of rare earths also increases: in the first half of 2022 demand for REE relative to the same period of 2021 grew by more than 60%. Main application areas:
According to analysts’ estimates, in coming years demand for rare-earth metals will increase rapidly. In particular this is linked to expanding production of electric vehicles and hybrids: manufacturing the power unit and transmission for one such vehicle requires more than 2.5 kg of permanent magnets.
Neodymium magnets are also one of the main elements of wind turbines. Today there are about 30 thousand wind generators of various capacities in the world, and producing each of them used from 100 to 700 kg of permanent magnets per megawatt of converted energy.
Another promising industry that every year requires more and more rare earths is robotics and robotization of production processes. Over the last 12 years robot production increased almost 10-fold. For example, in 2010 only 60 thousand products were assembled in the world, and in 2022 China alone produced 366 thousand units of robotic equipment. This sphere urgently needs continuous neodymium supplies for permanent magnets of electric motors; it also ensures high demand for other rare-earth metals needed to manufacture sensors, processors, hard drives, etc.
The main supplier of rare-earth metals in the world is China. But amid growing demand for REE and their strategic importance, more and more countries are pursuing their own developments in mining and producing rare-earth elements. By preliminary estimates Russia ranks 5th in the world in natural REE reserves. But for now more than 90% of rare earths are imported into the country from abroad. By 2025 this figure is planned to be reduced to 50% by developing new deposits and building large processing enterprises that will make it possible to obtain REE from mineral fertilizer waste.
