Column: Where there's muck there's brass ... and critical minerals: Andy Home

5N Plus

26/07/2022 12:43

By Andy Home
    LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - Scandium sits in the shadows of
the periodic table. Even by the esoteric standards of other
critical minerals, the soft, silvery metal with the atomic
number 21 is something of an enigma. 
    The global market is thought to be somewhere between 15 and
25 tonnes in size, but no one is very sure. Production is
potentially a lot higher. It's difficult to say, however, since
much of it is in China and production is always as a by-product
of other metals. 
    Russia used scandium-aluminium alloys in its MIG fighter
jets as early as the 1980s. It, too, has scandium production. 
    The United States, by contrast, has been wholly reliant on
imports in recent years. It is typical of scandium's opacity
that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says there is
"no definitive data" on suppliers. 
    Imports are "thought to be mostly from Europe, China, Japan
and Russia", the USGS says. 
    It's not hard to see why scandium is on the U.S. critical
minerals list. 
    It turns out, though, that Rio Tinto  RIO.L  has been
producing scandium all along at its titanium operations over the
Canadian border. But the metal now deemed critical was going
with other waste into a tailings pond. 
    The company has now worked out how to extract scandium oxide
from the titanium processing stream, making it North America's
sole producer. 
    Rio Tinto has just performed the same trick for another
critical mineral - tellurium - at its copper smelter in Utah. 
    Mine and processing waste is fast emerging as a new frontier
for critical metals supply. 
    
    THE 'IF' METAL
    Scandium, according to the Minor Metals Trade Association
(MMTA), has long been considered an "if" metal. ("Scandium
emerges from the shadows" https://mmta.co.uk/2022/04/05/scandium-emerges-from-the-shadows,
 April 5, 2022)
    If only there were enough supply, particularly Western
supply, manufacturers would have exploited its qualities as an
alloying agent with aluminium. 
    Throw a tiny amount of scandium into the aluminium melt and
you get 10-15% weight reduction, higher strength, greater
flexibility and resistance to thermal shock. 
    All characteristics that make it perfect for
high-performance aircraft or aerospace applications.
    However, for want of accessible supply, scandium-aluminium
alloys have been confined to niche Western products such as
baseball bats and lacrosse sticks. 
    Rio Tinto Fer et Titane will change that by ramping up its
commercial-scale demonstration plant in Quebec to nameplate
capacity of three tonnes a year, which may not sound much but is
equivalent to about a fifth of global supply. 
    The project took less than two years from drawing board to
commercial demonstration, needs no extra mining and comes with a
low carbon footprint. 
    
    TURNING SLIME INTO SOLAR PANELS
    Tellurium is another critical mineral headache for the
United States. Import reliance is more than 95%, the USGS says. 
    China is the world's dominant producer, extracting tellurium
from metallic waste streams. Global production was only 580
tonnes in 2021, according to Rio Tinto. 
    Lying on what the MMTA describes as "the boundary of metals
and non-metals", tellurium demand is spread across a broad
spectrum of specialist applications. 
    However, its use via cadmium telluride in solar panels makes
it an important and fast-growing energy transition metal. 
    First Solar  FSLR.O , the largest U.S. photovoltaic panel
producer, will be a customer of Rio Tinto's Kennecott copper
smelter-refinery in Utah. 
    The tellurium was previously part of Kennecott's anode slime
waste stream, destined for treatment and long-term storage. 
    Now it will be converted into copper-tellurium at a rate of
20 tonnes a year before being sent to Canada's 5N Plus  VNP.TO 
for refining and onward supply to First Solar. 5N Plus will also
use some of the material for ultra-high purity semiconductor
materials at its Utah facility.  
    Kennecott's new tellurium circuit cost only $2.9 million and
took less than three years to build after the local team started
measuring sufficiently high concentrations in the copper ore in
2019. 
    
    TOTAL MINING
    Both these projects are transformative, de-risking two of
the United States' critical mineral supply chains. 
    Neither requires an extra tonne of mined rock, obviating the
need to engage in what is often a tortuous planning and
authorisation process. 
    They are examples of a new industry trend towards so called
whole-concept mining, also known as total mining, broadening a
historical focus on one or two primary products to potentially
everything of metallic value in the ore being mined and
processed. 
    "Kennecott's tellurium plant is the latest example of work
we're doing globally to minimise waste by finding a use for
every material we dig from the ground or creating new products
from the waste itself," Rio Tinto says. 
    Producers the world over are going back to their processing
sheets to understand better what they have previously been
throwing in the waste pond. 
    Russian aluminium producer Rusal  RUAL.MM , for instance,
has found its own way of making scandium from the "red mud"
waste generated in the alumina refining process. 
    It launched its ScAlution range of scandium alloys last
year, aspiring to capture a share of a market that could grow to
300,000 tonnes a year by 2035 thanks to improved supply. 
    The next big waste-to-minerals challenge is lithium, the
metal that sits at the very heart of the green energy
transition. 
    Rio Tinto is working on a project to produce lithium from 90
years of waste accumulated at its Boron mine site in California
and others are following the same path, targeting old
coal-mining districts as a potential source of lithium and other
energy transition metals such as cobalt and manganese. 
    The USGS has been tasked with mapping and collecting data
for areas containing mine waste "to increase understanding of
above-ground critical mineral resources in previously disturbed
areas".
    It's not only a highly cost-effective way of closing the
country's critical minerals gaps, but also a way of closing the
green-on-green divisions that cause every new energy transition
metals mine to run into fierce environmental opposition. 
    The green future, it turns out, can be achieved at least in
part by cleaning up the mining legacy of the past. 
    
Andy Home is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are
his own.
    
    

 (Editing by David Goodman)
 ((andy.home@thomsonreuters.com, 44-207-542-4412 and on Twitter
https://twitter.com/AndyHomeMetals))