source:FreethinkThe United States’ reliance on China for rare earth elements could soon come to an end, thanks to a new process that pulls the valuable metals from the ash left over when we burn coal.Why it matters: The 17 rare earth elements aren’t actually rare — they’re all more common than gold, and one is more abundant than copper. But getting our hands on them is difficult because they’re widely dispersed in Earth’s crust and hard to extract through mining.That’s a problem because we need rare earth elements to make a lot of products, from smartphones and satellites to electric cars and ...
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2022
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source:The West AnstralianNorthern Minerals has been refining its heavy rare earths processing systems using a specialised pilot plant that could see the company become the world’s first serious heavy rare earth producer outside of China. Northern has an expanding dysprosium and terbium resource base at its flagship Browns Range project. Both products are critical in the manufacture of permanent magnets in an electric vehicle motor.Only 5 operating heavy rare earths processing facilities exist worldwide - and they are all in China. Northern is attempting to break the Chinese monopoly with its ...
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2022
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source:New AtlasRadio waves don't travel well through water, which is why devices such as ROVS (remotely operated vehicles) have to be linked to their operator via a communications cable. According to a new study, however, solar panels may soon allow for practical underwater light-based communications.First of all, various groups have already used pulses of laser light to transmit data underwater. The functionality of such systems has been limited, though, due to the fact that the transmitter which emits the light has to be precisely aligned with the photodiode that receives it. Because of...
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2022
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source:EurekAlertThermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity and vice versa, and their atomic structures are closely related to how well they perform.Now researchers have discovered how to change the atomic structure of a highly efficient thermoelectric material, tin selenide, with intense pulses of laser light. This result opens a new way to improve thermoelectrics and a host of other materials by controlling their structure, creating materials with dramatic new properties that may not exist in nature.“For this class of materials that’s extremely important, because their functional p...
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2022
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