solvent-extraction
3 articles
- The Rare Earth Know-How Embargo
China's controls on rare earth expertise target the operators and engineers required to bring Western separation and magnet plants to commercial yield. Tacit process knowledge is the binding constraint on replication.
- The Critical Minerals Water Bottleneck: Why Hydrology Is the Hard Constraint on U.S. Scale-Up
Water scarcity is the hard physical constraint on U.S. critical minerals scale-up. This analysis maps how hydrological limits in the American Southwest gate the social license to operate for lithium and rare earth mining, and why Direct Lithium Extraction and Zero-Liquid Discharge are the engineering responses, with their energy, reagent, and capital trade-offs.
- The Rare Earth Bottleneck Is Processing, Not Mining
China controls 91% of rare earth refining and 98% of heavy rare earth separation. Western mining is expanding, but separation, magnet manufacturing, and process expertise remain the binding constraints.