China Bans Exports - Where, Oh Where, Will We Get Our Critical Metals From?

This is not, in fact, difficult

Worries, eh? Worries. Actually, very few worries.

Dec 3 (Reuters) - China on Tuesday banned exports to the United States of the critical minerals gallium, germanium and antimony that have widespread military applications, escalating trade tensions the day after Washington's latest crackdown on China's chip sector.

The curbs strengthen enforcement of existing limits on critical minerals exports that Beijing began rolling out last year, but apply only to the U.S. market, in the latest escalation of trade tensions between the world's two largest economies ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking office next month.

This will lead to an orgy of rent seeking as everyone and their Granny tries to get Federal money to support their project to restore essential national independence and security by - ah, fuck that shite. As everyone decides to line their pockets.

So, Gallium (Ga) and Germanium (Ge). Yep, lovely metals both, both with interesting applications in electronics. One of ‘ems a couple of hundred tonnes a year globally the other is about half that. Or maybe double - I can never quite remember which way around those numbers go and this is all too trivial to look it up. For both of them about half the market is supplied by reprocessing scrap - mostly process scrap but Ge perhaps more end of life scrap. The difference there is that process scrap is the bits you cut off in makin’ things, end of life is when it’s been used and not being used any more.

Yes, I have sold scrap of both. I also know - not to an engineer’s level of detail, tho’ I have evaluated a plan for a germanium plant professionally - quite a lot about both of them.

Cost is in the $1,000 a kg to $2,000 a kg level for both. So, even at the v top end of estimates of market size we’re talking under half a billion. The sort of thing we should be able to do in a $50 trillion economy (c. the US plus EU) without breaking into a sweat.

And, Dear Reader, we can.

We need the raw material. We need the actual atoms of the elements. Ga is easy peasy. We stuff the right little gubbins on the side of a Bayer Process plant (the thing we use to turn bauxite into aluminium oxide) and we get “raw” gallium. Most Bayer Process plants don’t have the gubbins so we can do that. Most Bayer Process plants are not in China. This is a few phone calls and some millions of $ problem.

Ge is a little different. There’s a specific zinc ore, sphalerite (or is it spharelite, again, never can recall but let’s not be gauche and check) which often contains Ge. Stick the right gubbins on the side of the zinc processing plant and away we go.

But if we want more there’s another way. You know coal fly ash? That stuff we collect from the chimnies of coal fired power plants? The stuff we’ve got hundreds of millions of tonnes of lying around in ponds (presumably just awaiting the watery tart to decide upon who should be the King)? Yep, that stuff. Stick that in cheap acid and extract the Ge. As, umm, China does.

We might have to shoot the planning bureaucrats and the environmental consultants to build our acid tanks but there are pleasures with everything in this life.

But, really, to point this out. There’s been a big announcement about how to get rare earths from coal. V. exciting etc. This was funded by Trump I. On the basis that he said he’d do something to make coal more valuable. Darpa and the like strewed out grants to find something valuable in coal. These rare earths? Nope, not valuable, the extraction costs are too high. But I do recall reading the rules for grant applications. The one thing you weren’t allowed to suggest, investigate, or get money for, was germanium from coal fly ash. On the obvious grounds that we all knew how to do that already (if they had been stupid enough to offer money for that I’d have tried for a couple of million to do exactly that).

Now, both do need refining up from that raw atoms stuff to the sort of purities that can be used in electronics. There’s a plant that does this in New Jersey - if I’m recalling the address of the place I sent some scrap to once correctly. Another in Belgium. And there’s a currently mothballed plant in Germany that really, really, makes the stuff electronics wants.

So, in reality, we’re done here. We know how to do this, don’t need “new deposits” nor mines, it’s a few bits of gubbins and some trivial amount of money.

Oh Dearie Me, what a blow to national security, eh?

Antimony, Sb, that’s different. I can imagine that Perpetua Resources is licking its lips. Could well be some juicy support given that they’re trying to finance/permit a gold/antimony mine in the US. Have to admit that, as at that link, I’m a tad sceptical.

Now the Sb market is very much larger. Uses in fire retardants and all sorts. But the national security market is very much smaller. And, guess what? There’s a domestic source.

Lead acid batteries usually contain Sb. Because they’re not really lead, they’re a lead/antimony alloy. Well, sorta. Because the world is moving, generally, from a Pb/Sb alloy to a Pb/Ca alloy to make them. But, it’s also true that lead acid batteries have one of the highest recycling rates of any metal - up there with gold if slightly behind that perhaps - at about 99%. Which does mean there’s a large quantity of Sb entering the recycling factories with no obvious place to go after.

Oh. We’re back to requiring the processing plant to produce the specific form and purity necessary rather than any shortage of the actual atoms under discussion.

Isn’t that fun?

Aye, well, Heathen Chinee decides to ban us from buying. We’ll do what we did last time. As I predicted, before it happened, over rare earths. Here, in Chapter 4 of this, free!, book.

Put me in charge and for $100 million the problem will be solved in 12 months. Find someone competent and $50 million in half the time. For the level of technical and fiscal difficulty we’re talking about is changing the water cooler supplier. Bit of a pain, costs a little, but no big deal.

Oh. Dearie, Dearie, me.