332 words Digital e-waste is a uniquely troublesome form of trash, because if you just dump those gizmos in a landfill, toxic chemicals can leach out of them into the soil and water. In rich countries, most people have no easy way to recycle their old Samsung Galaxy phones, Xbox controllers, and other devices, so … Read more
243 words Most businesses that call themselves metal recyclers don’t actually turn old junk into new metal. They are primarily collectors, aggregators. They process the junk, to varying degrees, and sort it into piles big enough to sell on down the chain to someone who can take it to the next stage. This is exactly … Read more
377 words. The reverse supply chain is like a bizarro mirror version. The raw materials at the start of this backward chain are finished products: hot water heaters, car bodies, coffee makers, computers. That’s why metal recycling is sometimes called “urban mining.” Like ore, those products contain valuable metals that are mixed with, bonded to, … Read more
769 words Lithium may be the oldest metal in the universe. Scientists believe it was created along with hydrogen and helium in the Big Bang. Humans discovered it quite a bit later, in 1817, thanks to the work of yet another industrious Swedish chemist, Johan August Arfwedson. (What is it with those Swedes?) Lithium turned … Read more
101 words Nickel comes in two basic forms: sulfides and laterites. Both require processing to be refined into battery grade metal, but nickel sulfides require much less processing than laterites. Russia has lots of sulfides. Most of Southeast Asia’s nickel, however, is lower-quality laterites. Refining this kind of nickel is considerably dirtier and more complicated. … Read more
338 words Humans have been using nickel for ages, but we didn’t actually realize it until fairly recently. The metal often comes mixed in ore deposits with copper and iron, adding a silvery shine that ancient blacksmiths liked for their tools, weapons, and armor. It wasn’t until 1750 that metallurgists in Saxony came across some … Read more
701 words Rare earths tend to come grouped together, with several present in the host rock—Mountain Pass’s bastnaesite ore contains fifteen of the seventeen rare earths, all but scandium and promethium—but they make up only a small fraction of that rock, and the concentrations vary widely. Mountain Pass’s rock is 7 to 8 percent rare … Read more
373 words. The number-one product we use rare earths to make is permanent magnets—components that convert movement into electricity, and electricity back into movement. Scientists began developing permanent magnets in the 1980s, when they figured out that adding a little bit of rare earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium to common metals like iron and … Read more
573 words. Rare earths are actually neither rare nor earths. Most of them are quite abundant, but they are almost never found in their pure form. Instead, they come dissipated in very low concentrations within other minerals, like grains of pepper in a meatball. That makes them difficult and expensive to separate out. Many of … Read more
Number of words: 2,199 On July 11th, nearly a minute into the rocket trip carrying Richard Branson, the British billionaire, to space, a yellow caution light appeared on the ship’s console. The craft was about twenty miles in the air above the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, and climbing, travelling more than twice … Read more
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