Natural resources that are rare

In their 2010 report, the World Trade Organization classified the goods that embody natural resources or require resources for their production, as natural resources. Natural resources are national assets that can dictate the country’s production and growth function. The abundance of natural resources will define a country’s trade policy and in turn, assert its position in global politics. The statistical definition identifies the products like fish, forestry, fuels, ores, and other minerals as natural resources and non-ferrous metals are generally called mining products. Further classification is done based on traded and non-traded goods, where scenery and biodiversity are classified as traded goods and water, and land as untraded goods ¹. Another classification is based on economics which is renewable and non-renewable resources. Renewable resources cannot be depleted and can be supplied continuously, whereas non-renewable resources have a shorter supply and exist in finite quantities, the most common being fossil fuels and mineral deposits.

The primary advantage for any country having natural resources is that they can be extracted to produce metallic and non-metallic products for various applications. A few countries that hold the major share of natural resources in the world as of 2021 are Russia (coal, oil, gold, natural gas, rare earth metals), the USA (copper, oil, gas, Molybdenum, rare earth metals, uranium, and many more metal ores), Saudi Arabia (oil, natural gas, copper, silver, tungsten), Canada (Industrial minerals, copper, lead, zinc, precious metals like gold, platinum, and silver), Iran (oil, coal, iron ore, manganese, sulfur, and zinc), China (timber, gold, bauxite ore, rice), Brazil (gold, iron, oil, uranium, platinum, tin, and timber), Australia (coal, gold, uranium, iron ore, alumina, uranium, and rare earth metals) ².

Resource abundance helps to raise trade between countries, which will act as an enabler to boost the economy, if in the right association. For example, in the case of African countries, natural resources are abundant, yet due to their poor resource management and weak institutional factors, they are still far behind the developed countries, which is not the case with dominant countries like the USA, or Australia, or Russia. A financially dominant economy can not only facilitate investments in firms but also drive technological innovations through them, which will act as a growth engine.

With the move towards cleaner and greener technologies, metals like rare earth, cobalt, nickel, vanadium, tungsten, and silver to name some, have become the go-to materials for applications like pollution scrubbers, fuel cells, batteries, water treatment plants, and catalytic converters. 

Another set of elements, called precious metals like gold, rhodium, platinum, and palladium, have great economic importance and are generally used for industrial or investment purposes. Gold is used as reserves for central banks, whereas platinum and palladium, owing to their volatility, were classified as critical commodities for investment purposes.

The rare earth, precious metals, and many other elements like lithium, tantalum, and bismuth are mined as ores, which contain more than two elements in the form of oxides, nitrides, or fluorides. Fractionation of elements is carried out through different processes, like fractional distillation or fusion route followed by chemical leaching or electrolytic, depending on the properties of ore and element(s) to be extracted. Techno-commercially, erecting an extraction unit requires not only an in-depth knowledge of equipment design, selection of sub-assemblies, and storage units but also a huge investment. Another important aspect and a major hurdle in the erection of units is adherence to environmental policies, which are mandatory due to the release of pollutant gases like chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), carbon monoxide, and other fluoride-based gases as by-products. Scrubbers are a pre-requisite that needs to be installed along with the equipment to remove harmful pollutants. Knowledge in material thermodynamics, hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, and system design & engineering is mandatory while working on the extraction of rare earth, precious metals, and many other elements like lithium, tantalum, and bismuth. The extraction of a few elements may require the use of more than one route. For example, rare earth metal extraction will require sufficient knowledge of hydrometallurgy/pyrometallurgy as well as chemical leaching to achieve the final product.

Recycle & Reuse

Recycle and reuse are the methodologies through which the above-mentioned metals can be used, in case of supply chain issues. The most used application where rare metals play a pivotal role are batteries, magnets for EVs, catalytic converters, and electronics, to name a few. Up to the completion of their lifetime, which is quantified as per their performance over a period, these components are scrapped as E-waste. Public and private agencies around the world have begun to invest in extracting rare metals from E-waste to reuse it for different applications. 

For example, mobile phone batteries, have elements like lithium and cobalt, which make them suitable for extracting these elements without depleting the natural resources further. 

With the growth of EVs in the world market, the scrapping of batteries, and permanent magnets will rise once they reach their end of life, as is the case with mobile phones. Efforts are underway around the world to set up recycling plants to extract rare and precious metals and reuse them for similar applications.

Going forward, it would be ideal for government agencies, research institutions, and mining industries to invest more in recycling and reuse methodologies to protect the existing natural resources from getting depleted without compromising on environmental factors.