The world of technology has come across a stumbling block that is slowing down and worrying the West equally. The scarcity of rare earth elements not only makes it more expensive and difficult to advance in the creation of electronic devices such as mobile phones and computers, but also in the batteries they use and even in renewable energy sources.
Although countries like China or Japan suffer less from this inconvenience due to having access to more rare earth elements, it has been discovered that on the other side of the world we have been overlooking an immense source of these elements for years that we couldn’t even imagine. Our volcanoes are full of these essential rare earth elements whose scarcity had the technology world on edge.
An unexpected source of rare earth elements
The concern was even greater when it was revealed that, by 2030, and maintaining the pace of demand that we have been experiencing, the demand for rare earth elements was going to increase fivefold, which could in one way or another jeopardize an industry that continues to struggle to find alternatives that, for example, result in more efficient and cheaper batteries. The discovery made by the Australian National University and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is a ray of hope.
By analyzing the solidification of extinct volcanoes with magma rich in iron, an enigmatic eruption that took place millions of years ago in certain now extinct volcanoes, they found that these rocks were unusually rich in rare earth elements. They suggest that searching for these types of elements in volcanoes like El Laco in Chile offers 100 times more efficiency than in other types of volcanoes.
With the theory in hand, scientists simulated volcanic eruptions in the laboratory to obtain the resulting rocks and, after heating them to extremely high temperatures, discovered that the abundance of rare earth elements contained in these rocks from extinct volcanoes was surprisingly rich.
Image | Din Muhammad Sumon
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