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ESCI 101 The Earth. Instructor: Cin -Ty Lee. What goes into making these devices?. Most of our metals are rare. ~50 kg of Cu used in a typical car ~kg of Nd. Cu in typical rock is 10 ppm (or 10 grams Cu per 1,000,000 grams of rock).
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ESCI 101The Earth Instructor: Cin-Ty Lee
Most of our metals are rare ~50 kg of Cu used in a typical car ~kg of Nd Cu in typical rock is 10 ppm (or 10 grams Cu per 1,000,000 grams of rock) If you want 50 kg of Cu, you need to process 5,000 tons of rock! Nd in typical rock is 20 ppm So….
In nature, we have ore deposits to help concentrate Cu ores are at 0.1 wt. % (or 1000 ppm) Compared to average crust, this is 100-fold enrichment Still, we need to process the ore To get 1 g of Cu, we need to process to 1 kg of rock For a typical car, we need to process 50 tons of ore
The Copper Crunch Prepared by the Resnick Institute
Rare earth element crunch REE workforce in USA Dysprosium Demand
Production supply Time Declining production (1) resource depleted
demand Production supply Time Declining production (2) production gap!