Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / What is a Critical Mineral? Dr. Nedal Nassar

Transcript

What is a Critical Mineral? Dr. Nedal Nassar · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Plenagio.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, today we are really excited.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have an excerpt from an interview with Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nadal Nassar, who is a PhD industrial ecologist.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nassar is the chief of the U.S.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Geological Survey's materials flow analysis section, a leading member of the U.S.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: National Science and Technology Council, and in 2019 won the very important Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nassar is an expert on critical minerals and how they flow through our societies.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And tune in next week for the full interview with Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Nassar.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, follow us on social medias.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are at Planet Geocast.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a new website, www.planetgeocast.com.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You make in the presentations and the papers I've seen of yours, you make these amazing flow charts.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're waterfall charts or kind of flow charts, but they're beautiful.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they're basically like take one element or one critical mineral and track it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you have the bandwidth is proportional to the amount of that material at any given process.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you go from mining to you know consumer end products to recycling, and some recycling loops back around and gets put in at different stages of the element's life cycle.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But they're absolutely beautiful.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was blown away by, I think I saw a tantalum one and a ruthenium one.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are so cool.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Chris, I want to kind of talk about these a little bit because they're just really impressive.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you walk us through constructing that from like pick one element and maybe be go like how do you even begin constructing that thing?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, can you paint a picture of take an element, an important element maybe, and walk us through that?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that possible to do?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what you're referring to are uh what's called Sankey diagrams.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and there are famous ones.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh that's somebody's name, I believe.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the most famous one is showing uh Napoleon's troops going into Russia and being decimated and coming back, and you see that the volume of the troops just shrinking.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So look that one up.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's they're they're really really beautiful um maps.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of doing one for a mineral commodity, let's say tantalum, as you mentioned.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So typically we start with the mining, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we start with where is this mine?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Who's mining it?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So tantalum is typically mined in the Great Lakes region in Central Africa.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: So can I interrupt one second?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us what tantalum is used for?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So tantalum is used most often or is most famously used in in capacitors, which are used in electronics, including your laptops, your cell phones, et cetera.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: All right, okay.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, go ahead.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, no, that's good.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: So tantalum is is mined in the DRC, so Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty fuzzy regarding what's going on there.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: You may have heard of the Dodd-Frank Act uh that was passed by Congress uh over a decade ago, I guess.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Part of it requires that US companies identify where they're getting their, they call them the three TGs.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold, right?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the three TGs.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So tantalum is one of them.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's it's there because of the issue of conflict resources.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you may have heard of the movie Blood Diamond.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of the same issue with with tantalum, the concern about quote unquote artisanal mining.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of that going on in the DRC, a lot of concerns about child labor, a lot of concerns about um instability in the region because of you know uh what's going on there.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of it gets mined in the DRC and then gets shipped off typically through a port in Tanzania uh and it goes off to China.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have folks on the ground from our survey typically.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: During the pandemic, we've traveled a lot less, as you can imagine, trying to understand what's going on in the industries of those countries.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: We also send out surveys to thousands of companies to understand you know how much they're producing.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we get that information uh either directly or indirectly from those primary sources.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not like you know, reviewing company quarterly earnings reports or something like that.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're sending people to go check on the ships that are sending them out because you just don't really know how much is coming out of these types of mining activities.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what I'm kind of getting here?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a combination of sort of all the above, is especially for things like tantalum where we have limited visibility about what's going on.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we do look at company annual reports, we do send out surveys to try to understand.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, can you answer these questions for us about how much you're producing as a company?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we do have people that go on you know on the ground to try to understand what's going on and really get the insight, make sure that the you know, sort of some ground-truthing, which literally ground-truthing, you know, does this number make sense or or not?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: So once we feel comfortable, we have a production number, a mine production number, uh, we then try to track.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, this is going to be in a form of a mineral concentrate.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: We typically try to track, you know, where is it flowing from there?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a smelter might be nearby or it might be, you know, across an ocean.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so we typically look at trade statistics to try to understand where the commodities are flowing, from which port to which port, or at least from which country to which country.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: The problem often with these minor metals is that the trade codes are not granular enough, right?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they might be lumping several commodities into a basket because the volumes are so small or the monetary value is just so little.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody cares to spend enough time to say, well, this is tantalum and that's niobium, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and oftentimes they they combine weird things together.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like tantalum is actually, I wish it was combined with niobium.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's typically combined with like vanadium and an elemental boron.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like who made this decision?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um Wow.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you were tracking the ore around, and then consumer goods, the consumer end of it is is uh I mean, how are you like putting a finger on that amount?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we do a lot of sleuthing, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we we're trying to put a puzzle together and try to piece it together to say, okay, you know, we have this uh market report that says this much.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have information regarding these industries and what they consume, and we can try to do sort of an intensity metric to say, okay, well, we know this many vehicles are being produced in the United States.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: We know the average content of of a vehicle is this, and we can sort of parse it out to say, well, this is the expected amount that might be in in in said product.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and once we have that number, then the question is, okay, the product is now in use, and we use what is called a lifetime model to say, okay, your cell phone or your your vehicle is going to be in use for a certain number of years, and then we expect it to come out of use.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, it's a black box because nobody's reporting a lot of this information.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So what we need to do is provide a lifetime distribution to say, okay, a vehicle typically lasts 15 years, plus or minus, maybe five years.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so we build our model to say it's like a little system, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it entered this this year, we expect it to come out in 2030.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's coming out of use.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we need to figure out so if we're looking at the snapshot in time today, we may or may not get statistics regarding what is actually being recycled.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so if if we do, then we can look at the difference to say, okay, well, this is how much was recycled, this is how much we expected to come out of use.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the difference is missing, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's either they're not using it or or they're discarded it to a landfill.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: So like you take the the amount that uh we have and then use.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think with tantalum, I think it was like we lose seven percent ish in production, right?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Is that about right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then where's that next step where we where we lose it?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it recycling?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it really is so you could have a little bit of dissipation during use, right?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So not really for tantalum, um for other commodities.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you can imagine if you're uh using titanium for your pigments, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you're uh for a paint, for example, you're you're losing it as you're using it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: For most things, yeah, most of the losses are not going to occur there, they're gonna occur after use.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what we call end-of-life losses.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So after you use them, it may be discarded, you either is collected or not collected.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: If it is collected, you go through some sort of recycling system that then brings it back back to the case.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so like that would be your cell phone sitting in your drawer, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: End of life use, it's it's taken out because nothing happened to it, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's no longer being used, but it's also not in the recycling system and not not being utilized again.
• 8:42
  unknown: Okay.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And what kind of numbers are we talking about?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think for tantalum, the overall recycling rate is less than 20%, like 18% of tantalum that's coming out of use is being recycled.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a shockingly known low number.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree with that?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like Yeah, and it's actually probably one of the better ones.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um really.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I think for for some of the base metals, you may be getting up to 50, 60 percent.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's amazing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But again, for some of these really, really small commodities, like every flat panel display, for example, contains indium, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't need very much of it, but you need it for uh what's called indium tin oxide.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a conductive base.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And virtually none of the indium is can uh is recycled post-consumer use.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: We do recycle quite a bit of it during the manufacturing stage, right?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're when we're building the flat panel displays, we do a really good job of collecting that scrap in the manufacturing scrap and recycling it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: But after use, it's not recycled.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Because they end up where in a landfill?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty much, yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or if if the if the panels get recycled, they're not gonna get recycled for for the Indian.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: They'll get recycled for again the the things that matter uh monetarily, copper uh and the precious metal.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so should there be a recycling program for this kind of thing with flat panel or flat panel screens?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, should there be something for this?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it would make a lot of sense.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can imagine closing if we go back to the original discussion about risk and the components of risk.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we have our likelihood of disruption, our exposure.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: This would close the exposure because essentially if if it's already here, right?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: If we already brought the products into the United States, if we're recycling them, then we keep it here, right?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're not exposed to that foreign supply disruption.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we have the materials that we need here, assuming you know they're in the right quantities and the right grades and it's in the right forms, et cetera.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I think a lot of times the economics of it is what drives the show.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I think the the big movement today uh is for electric vehicles, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what everybody wants to talk about.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the big thing for electric vehicles, because it makes it a significant component of the vehicle cost, is the battery.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so there you do see a lot of companies stepping up and saying, hey, we're gonna set up battery recycling plants because we can see 10, 15 years from now, when the batteries are ready to be recycled, we're gonna have large volumes.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you see a lot of companies stepping up and saying, we're gonna set up a recycling plant, either you know, somewhere in North America or Europe, for example.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's an infrastructure thing, isn't it?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's absolutely an infrastructure thing.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a logistical logistics thing.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to, of course, there's always going to be technical issues.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: But oftentimes, when when we get the material, we often have ways to solve the the technical issues of how do you actually get get the material that you want out.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a wrap for the preview.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Join us next week for the full interview with Dr.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nadal Nassar.
• 11:44
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• 11:47
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• 11:54
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• 12:08
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