Environmental Consequences

of the Environmental
Revolution
Dr Martin Cooke
School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
Law of Unintended Consequences
• The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of
people—and especially of government—always have effects that are
unanticipated or unintended.
Example
• The burning of fossil fuels has enabled the greatest and fastest advances in human
civilisation and wellbeing.
• The burning of fossil fuels has created an environmental disaster on a local and global
scale
Example
• The replacement of fossil fuels with alternative green energies will create a greener
and more sustainable environment securing the future for all
• The replacement of fossil fuels with alternative green energies could cause and
environmental disaster and the potential for future conflicts
 Ages of Man are defined by Mining
• There is a simple truth
“If you can’t grow it you have to dig it up”
• The technology we use is defined by our ability to use
materials that we dig up and extract.
• As we get better at this we create more ingenious tools
that improve our lot in life
• This rate of ingenious change is not limited by the
available resources but by our ability to adapt to new
opportunities
• The world didn’t move out of the stone age because we
ran out of stone
 Stone Age

Trade routes developed in flint, flint tools and Sarsen

Stones

English Heritage
 Copper Age
Great Orme Copper Mine - Llandudno

Native Copper
Malachite Cu2CO3(OH)2
• 4000 years old
• Mined with stone and antler tools
• Biggest copper mine in Europe at time
• Evolution from stone tools made from
copper to tools designed to be made
from copper
• Trade
Formation of metal Deposits
• Igneous Intrusions
• Hydrothermal Solutions
• Placer Deposits
• Laterite soils
 Igneous Intrusions
• Pegmatites are intrusive igneous rocks
• They cool very slowly forming massive crystals
• They produce smaller intrusions that are rich in rare metals
 The Bushveldt Complex
• As magma cools different minerals
crystalise at different temperatures
and pressures.
This give local concentrations of
different minerals

50% of all the worlds vanadium 75% of all the world’s

chromite Massive platinum deposits
Hydrothermal Ore Deposits

Galena Vein - Nenthead

http://www.sciencephoto.com/

Superheated water dissolves minerals at depth

It rises to the surface where it cools and deposits
the minerals in veins
Placer Deposits
 Laterite Deposits
• In tropical environments, heavy
rain leaches minerals from the
surface to deeper layers where
they precipitate and for enriched
bands of minerals
• Laterite soils
 Bronze Age

• Copper good but

bronze is better
• Alloy of Copper and Tin
• Trade
• Evolution to bronze
specific designs
Iron Age
Metal Mining in
England and Wales
• All of these metals were mined
by the Romans in Britain
• They are found in locally high
concentrations and are
relatively easy to extract once
you’ve worked out how to
extract them
Industrial Revolution – The Machine age

• Coalbrookdale 1615
Sir basil Brooke
bought the patent
for making steel by
cementation
process and set up
a blast furnace
• Steel and Coal
Plastics Age

6 Billion Tonnes of Plastic produced

Silicon Age
Nano Age

• A whole new scale

• Graphene and Buckminster Fullerenes will enable us to build tiny
machines
Future Ages

Where is my Hoverboard?
 Renewable Energies
Solar Panels use
• Crystalline silicon
• Copper indium gallium selenide
• Gallium arsenide
• Cadmium telluride

Rechargeable batteries use

• Lithium – sulphur
• Sodium ion
• Zinc bromide
• Zinc – cerium
• Vanadium
• Silver
• Cobalt
 Rare Earth Elements
• Rare earth metals and their alloys are used in many
everyday devices such as computer memory, DVDs,
rechargeable batteries, cell phones, catalytic
converters, magnets, fluorescent lighting and much
more.
• During the past twenty years, there has been an
explosion in demand for many items that require
rare earth metals.
• Twenty years ago there were very few cell phones
in use, but the number has risen to over 7 billion in
use today.
• The use of rare earth elements in computers has
grown almost as fast as cell phones
1985
cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd),
holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd),
praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc),
terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb) and yttrium (Y).
 Indium Tin Oxide

• ITO is optically transparent and conducts electricity

 This surge in demand has lead to a surge in production
of REE. This is entirely dominated by China

United States Usage

(2015 data from USGS)
Chemical Catalysts 60%

Metallurgy & Alloys 10%

Ceramics and Glass Making 10%

Glass Polishing 10%

Other 10%

http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
 Are These Elements Really Rare?
• Rare earth elements are not as rare as their name implies.
• Thulium and lutetium are the two least abundant rare earth elements -
but they each have an average crustal abundance that is nearly 200
times greater than the crustal abundance of gold.
• However, these metals are very difficult to mine because it is unusual
to find them in concentrations high enough for economical extraction.
• The most abundant rare earth elements are cerium, yttrium,
lanthanum and neodymium. They have average crustal abundances
that are similar to commonly used industrial metals such as chromium,
nickel, zinc, molybdenum, tin, tungsten and lead.
• Again, they are rarely found in extractable concentrations.

http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
 Carbonatites are rare carbonate
rich igneous intrusions.
They are, almost exclusively,
associated with continental rift-
related tectonic settings.
There are only 527 known
carbonatites in the world

Iron Hill rare earth deposit: Iron Hill, Gunnison County, Colorado.

Iron Hill is formed by a massive carbonatite stock that forms the
centre of an alkaline intrusive complex. This complex contains
titanium, niobium, rare earth elements, and thorium. USGS Image
 Rare Earth Placer Deposits
• Monazite is a rare phosphate mineral with a
chemical composition of (Ce,La,Nd,Th)(PO4,SiO4).
It usually occurs in small isolated grains, as an
accessory mineral in igneous and metamorphic
rocks such as granite, pegmatite, schist, and
gneiss.
• Many common igneous, metamorphic, and even
older sedimentary rocks contain enough
monazite to produce a monazite-bearing placer.
http://geology.com/usgs/
ree-geology/
 Mining comes in a variety of scales

Copper mining South Africa

Gem mining Sri lanka
http://www.collectorfinejewelry.com http://www.kruger2canyons.com
Gold Mine – Palbora South Africa
 Residual Rare Earth Deposits
• A particular type of REE deposit,
is formed by the leaching of rare
earth elements from seemingly
common igneous rocks and
fixing the elements onto clays in
soil.
• These deposits are only known
in southern China and
Kazakhstan and their formation
is poorly understood.
Complex Mineral
Processing
• REE-bearing minerals contain as many as 14 individual REE
that must be further separated and refined.
• Sulphide ores are smelted to burn off sulphur and separate
impurities.
• REE are extracted and refined through dozens of chemical
processes to separate the different REE and remove
impurities.
• The principal impurity in REE-bearing minerals is thorium,
which radioactive. Radioactive materials are difficult to mine
and handle safely.
• This complexity is compounded by the fact that no two REE
ores are alike.
• There is no standard process for extracting and refining the
REE-bearing minerals. To develop a new rare earth elements
mine, the processing has to almost begin from scratch.
 Danger of a Dominant Producer
• Chinese dominance peaked in 2010 when they controlled 95% of the world's rare earth
production
• Prices for many rare earth oxides had risen over 500% in just a few years.
• Mining companies in the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries began to re-
evaluate old rare earth prospects and explore for new ones.
• High prices also caused manufacturers to do three things:
1)reduce the amount of rare earth elements needed to produce each of their products
2) identify alternative materials to use in place of rare earth elements
3) develop alternative products that do not require rare earth elements.
• This resulted in a decline in the amounts of rare earth materials used in some types of
magnets and a shift from rare earth lighting products to light-emitting diode technology.
• In the United States, the average consumption of rare earths per unit of manufactured
product has decreased but the demand for more products manufactured with rare earth
elements has increased. The result has been higher consumption.
http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
 Danger of a Dominant Producer
• Supply and demand normally determine the market price of a
commodity.
• With rare earth elements, the time between a mining company's
decision to acquire a property and the start of production can be
several years or longer. There is no fast way to open a new mining
property.
• If a single country controls almost all of the production and makes a
firm decision not to export, then the entire supply of a commodity
can be quickly cut off. That is a dangerous situation when new
sources of supply take so long to develop.
• In 2010 China significantly restricted their rare earth exports. This
shift by China triggered panic buying and some rare earth prices shot
up exponentially.
http://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/
Summary
• The demand for the novel technologies needed to power the green
revolution has created a new mining boom for REE
• These minerals are hard to extract and require huge amounts of water
and energy.
• They are polluting industries
• Their production is dominated by a single producer
• This creates the potential for trade wars and possible conflict
• We need to find a new sustainable way to extract these minerals that
enables all to benefit from this revolution
 Thank You.

Any Questions?
Wednesday November 1st at 12.30 to 1.30.
 
These sessions take place at 'Explore' on the 4th floor at
Commercial Union House in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle. Straight
down Northumberland Street if you're walking down from
Drummond Building. It's the brutalist building which stands out
over the road, opposite the Tyneside Cinema - there's a big
hole next door where they have knocked down the old Odeon
cinema (hopefully the demolition noise has finished, but the
filling in and flattening the ground noise is currently present).