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  • Urgent need to recycle rare metals

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    Urgent need to recycle rare metals

    Date:
    February 17, 2014
    Source:
    SINTEF
    Summary:
    Rare earth metals are important components in green energy products such as wind turbines and eco-cars. But the scarcity of these metals is worrying the European Union.

    Rare earth metals are important components in green energy products such as wind turbines and eco-cars. But the scarcity of these metals is worrying the EU.

    The demand for metals such as neodymium (Nd) and dysprosium (Dy) is increasing much faster than production. These metals are used in technologies such as the generators that store power in wind turbines, and the electric motors that propel electric and hybrid cars. But they are also used in everyday products like computers and mobile phones.

    Rare earth metals do occur in Earth’s crust, but not in sufficiently high concentrations. This is why only one country — China — has so far been supplying the entire world with these elements. However, in recent years, China has begun to restrict its export of these materials.

    Forecasts show that as early as next year, these metals will be hard to come by.

    Clean material

    This explains why the recycling of rare earth metals from scrap is fast becoming an important research topic. Seven major European research institutes (Fraunhofer, CEA, TNO, VTT, SINTEF, Tecnalia and SP) have joined forces to invest in a joint programme (Value from Waste) aimed at tackling this important issue.

    “The aim is to extract valuable materials from the waste streams. The challenges lie in the fact that the material must be sufficiently clean in order to be recycled, and we have to be sure that it is not contaminated by other harmful materials,” explains Odd Løvhaugen of SINTEF ICT.

    Researchers are therefore focusing much of their work on finding out which products could contain pollutants, which methods are best for analysing and measuring the content of the polluted materials, and when such products can be expected to be found in waste.

    They are also evaluating extraction methods, techniques to recycle nanoparticles in the treatment process, and how the constituents of ash can be analysed after incineration.

    Technology from the aluminium and smelting industry

    SINTEF is coordinating this major EU programme, which is using two groups of material technologies in the race to find good analytical and extraction methods. The approach chosen by the researchers involves a technology well-known from the aluminium and smelting industry. In the search for sources of recycling material, many people have been considering permanent magnets. This is the most significant product to contain rare earth metals — measured both in terms of value and volume.

    Discarded magnets

    On the basis of tests, SINTEF researchers believe that the electrolysis technology used in aluminium plants can be used to recycle magnetic alloys from discarded magnets and scrap material from magnet manufacturers. It will take some time before there are enough scrap eco-cars to be able to recycle their motors, which is why they are turning to the magnet manufacturers for the magnetic alloys. However, the process is still slow, and there is a lot of work still to be done before the researchers will know whether they will be able to achieve their goal. If they are successful, they will have found a method that is much simpler than alternative processes based on the use of strong acids.

    Solutions needed

    Several other problems must also be solved for the stages before the electrolysis process. Among other things, we need collection and disassembly methods for used magnets, and the magnets themselves must also be demagnetised locally, since the long-distance transport of intact permanent magnets is prohibited.

    “Other challenges include finding methods that can identify and characterise nanoparticles in gases, water and solid materials,” says Odd Løvhaugen. “And we must create a toolbox of methods to evaluate the behaviour of nanoparticles in waste treatment processes.”

    Story Source:

    The above story is based on materials provided by SINTEF. Note: Materials may be

  • Volcanoes, including Mt. Hood, can go from dormant to active quickly

    Volcanoes, including Mt. Hood, can go from dormant to active quickly

    02/17/2014

    CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study suggests that the magma sitting 4-5 kilometers beneath the surface of Oregon’s Mount Hood has been stored in near-solid conditions for thousands of years, but that the time it takes to liquefy and potentially erupt is surprisingly short – perhaps as little as a couple of months.

    The key, scientists say, is to elevate the temperature of the rock to more than 750 degrees Celsius, which can happen when hot magma from deep within the Earth’s crust rises to the surface. It is the mixing of the two types of magma that triggered Mount Hood’s last two eruptions – about 220 and 1,500 years ago, said Adam Kent, an Oregon State University geologist and co-author of the study.

    Results of the research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, were published this week in the journal Nature.

    “If the temperature of the rock is too cold, the magma is like peanut butter in a refrigerator,” Kent said. “It just isn’t very mobile. For Mount Hood, the threshold seems to be about 750 degrees (C) – if it warms up just 50 to 75 degrees above that, it greatly increases the viscosity of the magma and makes it easier to mobilize.”

    Thus the scientists are interested in the temperature at which magma resides in the crust, they say, since it is likely to have important influence over the timing and types of eruptions that could occur. The hotter magma from down deep warms the cooler magma stored at 4-5 kilometers, making it possible for both magmas to mix and to be transported to the surface to eventually produce an eruption.

    The good news, Kent said, is that Mount Hood’s eruptions are not particularly violent. Instead of exploding, the magma tends to ooze out the top of the peak. A previous study by Kent and OSU postdoctoral researcher Alison Koleszar found that the mixing of the two magma sources – which have different compositions – is both a trigger to an eruption and a constraining factor on how violent it can be.

    “What happens when they mix is what happens when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste in the middle,” said Kent, a professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “A big glob kind of plops out the top, but in the case of Mount Hood – it doesn’t blow the mountain to pieces.”

    The collaborative study between Oregon State and the University of California, Davis is important because little was known about the physical conditions of magma storage and what it takes to mobilize the magma. Kent and UC-Davis colleague Kari Cooper, also a co-author on the Nature article, set out to find if they could determine how long Mount Hood’s magma chamber has been there, and in what condition.

    When Mount Hood’s magma first rose up through the crust into its present-day chamber, it cooled and formed crystals. The researchers were able to document the age of the crystals by the rate of decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements. However, the growth of the crystals is also dictated by temperature – if the rock is too cold, they don’t grow as fast.

    Thus the combination of the crystals’ age and apparent growth rate provides a geologic fingerprint for determining the approximate threshold for making the near-solid rock viscous enough to cause an eruption. The diffusion rate of the element strontium, which is also sensitive to temperature, helped validate the findings.

    “What we found was that the magma has been stored beneath Mount Hood for at least 20,000 years – and probably more like 100,000 years,” Kent said. “And during the time it’s been there, it’s been in cold storage – like the peanut butter in the fridge – a minimum of 88 percent of the time, and likely more than 99 percent of the time.”

    In other words – even though hot magma from below can quickly mobilize the magma chamber at 4-5 kilometers below the surface, most of the time magma is held under conditions that make it difficult for it to erupt.

    “What is encouraging from another standpoint is that modern technology should be able to detect when magma is beginning to liquefy, or mobilize,” Kent said, “and that may give us warning of a potential eruption. Monitoring gases, utilizing seismic waves and studying ground deformation through GPS are a few of the techniques that could tell us that things are warming.”

    The researchers hope to apply these techniques to other, larger volcanoes to see if they can determine their potential for shifting from cold storage to potential eruption, a development that might bring scientists a step closer to being able to forecast volcanic activity.

    About the OSU College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences: CEOAS is internationally recognized for its faculty, research and facilities, including state-of-the-art computing infrastructure to support real-time ocean/atmosphere observation and prediction. The college is a leader in the study of the Earth as an integrated system, providing scientific understanding to address complex environmental challenges

  • A wet warning from Australia’s Top End on rising sea levels

    Rising sea levels are typically written about as a “threat to future generations” – something to worry about by 2050 or 2100, not now. But if you want to see why even relatively small increases in sea…

    Riding underwater on Darwin’s most popular bike path, on 1 February 2014. Andrew Campbell

    Rising sea levels are typically written about as a “threat to future generations” – something to worry about by 2050 or 2100, not now. But if you want to see why even relatively small increases in sea levels matter, come to Darwin.

    The Arafura and Timor Seas off northern Australia are a global hotspot for warming oceans and rising sea levels. CSIRO

    Australia’s top end is a global hotspot for rising sea levels. In Darwin and the World Heritage-listed floodplains of Kakadu National Park, we’re seeing how the combination of gradual sea level rise and “normal” weather events – such as storms and king tides – can have surprisingly big impacts.

    Small changes adding up to big damage

    Storms and heavy rain are not unusual in the Darwin wet season. But recent weather has been spectacular, as monsoonal onshore winds coincided with king tides to batter the shoreline. Crowds gathered to see waves crashing over cliffs and jetties that usually overlook calm seas. Tragically, two people got into trouble in these rough seas, losing their lives, and a young boy drowned in a flooded stormwater drain.

    Sea levels around Darwin, which abuts the warm, shallow Arafura Sea, have risen by about 17 centimetres over the past 20 years. As the CSIRO noted in its last State of the Climate report, the rates of sea-level rise to the north and northwest of Australia have been 7 to 11 millimetres per year, which is two to three times the global average. Along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, rates of sea-level rise are around the global average.

    Sea-level rise rates around Australia, as measured by coastal tide gauges (circles) and satellite observations (contours) from January 1993 to December 2011. CSIRO State of the Climate 2012
    Click to enlarge

    Seventeen centimetres may not seem much, especially with a 7 to 8 metre daily tidal range. However, raising the underlying base makes a big difference, not just to the ultimate penetration of big tides and storm surges, but also in the everyday hydrodynamic fluxes on beaches, estuaries and floodplains.

    The impact of recent Darwin weather on infrastructure — both built and natural — has profound implications for coastal planning, design, management and regulation. The recent confluence of 8-metre king tides with strong onshore winds after weeks of wet monsoonal weather was unusual, but well short of being even a Category 1 cyclone.

    By Darwin standards, there has been nothing exceptional about this wet season’s wind or tides. There was heavier than average rain last month – but even that has been a long way short of the records, or even a 1-in-10 year event.

    The chunk of bitumen with the white line used to be the bike path. Andrew Campbell
    Click to enlarge

    Yet the damage we are seeing in Darwin has been considerable. Near where we live, a significant stretch of the city’s most popular bike path (right) was washed away. Further north, a large casuarina tree, which 10 years ago stood atop the landward side of two dunes, toppled into the surf. A blowhole emerged where waves had undercut the cliffs.

    As the City of Darwin has acknowledged for years, eroding coastlines are a growing problem for Darwin.

    And as global maps in a recent article in the journal Nature showed, Darwin is just one of many cities – including heavily populated centres such as New York City, Kolkata and Shanghai – at growing risk of coastal flooding, in part due to accelerating sea-level rise.

    How can we manage change better?

    In Darwin, like other low-lying coastal settlements, we essentially have three options: start managing our retreat from the sea; try to engineer coastal defences; or get used to much more volatile and risky life on the edge, and modify our systems, policies and behaviour accordingly.

    Of course, we could simply do nothing. But we contend that is the least credible and potentially most expensive option in the long run.

    The other three options of managed retreat, investment in coastal defences, and accepting greater risk are not mutually exclusive. They can be blended within a well-conceived long-term strategy.

    Managed retreat is the most confronting option, which some communities are already facing. Some low-lying coastal areas simply cannot be defended cost-effectively, and even the best adaptation strategies may be inadequate.

    But there are also significant opportunities to reconfigure coastal settlement in ways that minimise social disruption.

    In places with valuable assets, such as parts of some cities or Kakadu, we can improve coastal defences, natural and/or engineered.

    On the Tommycut Creek: this used to be a freshwater melaleuca forest, like those seen in the film Ten Canoes, but saltwater intrusion has turned it into a hypersaline swamp. Eric Valentine

    After our recent storms, Darwin’s coasts were more intact in sections where mangroves, trees and shrubs protected the soil. While the shoreline did retreat, damage was less than in cleared sections. We need to be replanting the dunes we want to keep, and retaining or restoring mangroves in estuarine and low-lying areas.

    The North Australian Biodiversity Hub is working with Kakadu Traditional Owners to look at options for managing the impacts of weeds and sea level rise on the floodplains that are so important for food for local people, and more broadly for Top End fishing and tourism experiences.

    A casuarina tree that used to be on the landward side of two dunes, now toppled on the beach. Andrew Campbell

    In Darwin, hard protection of foreshore made some difference. But even rock-walled sections were disassembled in places, with the rocks dragged back into the sea or thrown, with astonishing force, onto the tops of cliffs.

    If expensive hard protection is going to be used, it needs to be done at a scale that is engineered to last for decades and withstand extreme weather events, taking into account projected future sea levels.

    The latest climate science suggests that northern Australia may have less frequent cyclones in future, but a higher proportion of extremely intense (Category 5 or worse) tropical cyclones.

    Darwin residents protest against a proposed residential island between Nightcliff and East Point. Andrew Campbell

    Thirdly, the construction of new residential or tourism infrastructure in exposed zones of the coastal environment is inherently risky. At the very least, coastal planning must take into account the amplified risks from continuing sea-level rise.

    Prepare now, or pay later

    What we are seeing now in Darwin is a taste of things to come in many coastal areas of the world if we don’t take preventative and adaptive measures.

    This has major implications for residents, investors, insurers, planners and policymakers. It also promises to create fertile grounds for litigation in the future, if people approving developments are not seen to be basing their decisions on the best available information.

    Recent events in Darwin underline that sea level, especially in the monsoonal north, is rising fast, and old assumptions should no longer hold.

    So we need to think long-term about which bits of coastal infrastructure we want to try to keep, and for how long, while steadily moving essential services to more secure places.

    And we should remember that recent storms have been mild compared to the cyclone that will likely whack Darwin again sooner or later.

  • Global warming discussion biased toward ‘political egoism’ of China, US – expert

     

    18 February 2014, 03:47

    Global warming discussion biased toward ‘political egoism’ of China, US – expert

    Global warming discussion biased toward 'political egoism' of China, US - expert

    © Flickr.com/Truthout.org/cc-by-nc-sa 3.0

    London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen and Antwerp might sink by the middle of the century. The recent climate change study quoting vice-president of the International Expert Group on Climate Change Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, says the recent floods in the UK are just a first sign of dramatic changes threatening the world. Heavy floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis – we have seen it all in different parts of the world, and the scale of cataclysms is only growing. Aleksei Kokorin, Climate and Energy Programme Director at the World Wildlife Fund Russia, talked with the Voice of Russia about the evolving crisis.

    How would you comment on the recent findings saying a large part of Europe will be flooded by the middle of the century?

    There are two effects, and these effects are different. One is sea level rise. It is very dangerous for coastal areas, however, by the end of the century this is maximum one meter. One meter or a bit more could be in tropical areas, and for small coral reefs, for small islands it is full catastrophe, of course. But for Europe it means that all dense of Amsterdam or all infrastructure should be reconstructed to keep one meter more, but only one meter.

    Another effect is more frequency, more severe precipitation – floods due to precipitation. It is another effect, which is not so well predicted and calculated as sea level rise, and it is possibly only to be told that first water will be high by 3 or maybe 5 times by the end of the century. It means that flood, which was once in 20 years will be each 7 years or each 4 years in 20 years.

    These are two different effects, and the both are directly relevant to the so-called global warming and anthropogenic impact on climate system. However, keep in mind that tsunami is not relevant to anthropogenic effect and some terrible heat waves like Moscow heat wave of 2010 is also not so relevant to anthropogenic climate change.

    Do you think we can still prevent it from happening?

    Of course, people are thinking about next century. When we speak about 22nd century, by the end of 22nd century the level rise could be 3 meters, what is significantly more dangerous for many European cities, as you mentioned, London, Amsterdam and some others. If you think about more, if you think about millennium, scientists according to recent ITCC report underlined that sea level rise from 5 to 10 meter is not excluded. It is a very difficult condition, it is very serious, however, it is not global catastrophe. But it is very costly, it is very serious. Therefore, the final appeal is completely correct while argumentations are sometimes too nervous, or too radical.

    What about the politics of climate change debate, how do political issues affect the discussion?

    There is a big political effect. The scientists and sea level rise and hurricanes indicate that more than a hundred states are most vulnerable, more sensitive to climate change. However, they don’t have money, they don’t have funds. Largest countries including the US and China have smaller vulnerability or sensitivity to climate change. Therefore, we see so-called political egoism, political or ecological egoism. The most rich countries, which are less sensitive to climate impacts, to climate shots, try to balance or to be so-called flexible in emissions while more than 100 weakest and more sensible countries will be maybe destroyed.

  • Sea rise policy impact ‘catastrophic’ EUROBODALLA SHIRE

    Wednesday February 19, 2014
    Larger / SmallerNight Mode

    Sea rise policy impact ‘catastrophic’

    By EMILY BARTON

    Feb. 19, 2014, 6:30 a.m.

    • Councillor Milton Leslight.Councillor Milton Leslight.

    EUROBODALLA Shire councillor Milton Leslight will put forward a motion at the next council meeting to repeal the council’s sea level rise policy and have council notify affected home owners.

    More than 6000 homes are affected by the sea level rise adaption policy, which was adopted by the council in 2009.

    Cr Leslight said residents should have been formally notified if they were affected when the policy was adopted, however said council was advised not to tell the community by a consultant.

    Cr Leslight, a real estate agent, said the impact on development and property value had been “catastrophic”.

    “People go to sell or build and then realise there is this horrendous millstone around there neck that they never knew about,” he said.

    “People have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of this.”

    The sea level rise debate frustrates Cr Leslight as he feels far more needs to be done to bring information public so the community can be better advised.

    “In my opinion the community is being held ransom,” he said.

    “It’s deceptive that we won’t inform the community.”

    The state government has withdrawn its sea level rise policy and announced that councils would have the flexibility to determine their own sea level rise projections to suit their local conditions.

    He said it is predicted that in the Eurobodalla by 2050 sea levels will have risen by 40cm and by 90cm in 2100.

    Cr Leslight said Shoalhaven City Coun-cil and Eurobodalla Shire Council recently engaged a consultant to review the policy surrounding the sea level raising, which was ongoing.

  • Canada’s Arctic ice caps melting rapidly since 2005, according to documents

    Canada’s Arctic ice caps melting rapidly since 2005, according to documents

    By Jason Fekete, Postmedia News February 18, 2014
    Canada’s Arctic ice caps melting rapidly since 2005, according to documents

    Ice floes float in Baffin Bay above the Arctic circle as seen from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent on July 10, 2008.

    Photograph by: Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press/Files , Postmedia News

    OTTAWA — Glacier monitoring conducted by the federal government in Canada’s High Arctic shows the shrinking of ice caps that started in the late 1980s “has accelerated rapidly since 2005” and is part of a “strongly negative trend,” according to internal government documents.

    The federal government data raise a number of questions about climate change in Canada’s North and what the melting ice caps mean for the country’s economy and environment in the future.

    A memo requested by the deputy minister of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) — and obtained by Postmedia News under access-to-information legislation — highlights what the federal government acknowledges are rapidly melting ice caps in Canada’s Arctic over the last nine years.

    The data were obtained through NRCan’s Climate Change Geoscience Program, which monitors annual glacier mass fluctuations and sea level changes at sites across the Canadian High Arctic.

    The federal government maintains glacier monitoring sites in the Canadian High Arctic for four ice caps: Devon, Meighen, Melville and Agassiz.

    “Glacier monitoring conducted by the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) in Canada’s High Arctic indicates that shrinking of ice caps started in the late 1980s, and has accelerated rapidly since 2005,” says an October 2013 memo to NRCan’s deputy minister, who reports to federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver.

    Preliminary data and observations — including on Arctic sea-ice coverage, upper atmospheric temperatures and field camp observations — indicate 2013 was cooler than the recent trend.

    While the ice melt in 2013 doesn’t appear as bad as recent years, “it does not significantly alter the strongly negative trend observed since 2005 for this region,” say the briefing materials.

    David Burgess, research scientist and glaciologist with Natural Resources Canada, explained that since 2005 there has been a persistent high-pressure system over Greenland, which has acted to draw in more warm air from southerly latitudes and contributed to a warming High Arctic.

    This same kind of system didn’t develop in 2013, which may explain the cooler temperatures last summer, he said.

    Federal data show the Devon ice cap’s northwest sector has lost 1.6 per cent of its mass since the 1960s, the Meighen approximately 11 per cent of its mass and the Melville about 13 per cent, he said. However, approximately 30 to 40 per cent of the ice mass lost has happened since 2005.

    “Since 2005 it has enhanced quite significantly,” Burgess said in an interview.

    The main consequence of shrinking Arctic ice caps is increasing sea levels, he said, which can impact Canadian coastlines depending on their resiliency to erosion and inundation.

    Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, a former senior policy adviser to the federal environment minister in the Mulroney government, said the federal information on melting ice caps is “very troubling” but also not surprising because other international data have reached similar conclusions.

    All Canadians should be concerned about climate change in the Arctic, she said. Along with directly impacting Inuit hunting, melting Arctic ice also will contribute to more extreme weather events in Canada such as droughts and flooding, she said.

    “What’s shocking is that the internal documents reflect this information. The government of Canada can’t claim it doesn’t know or isn’t being warned, doesn’t understand that we are rapidly losing ice in the Arctic,” May said.

    “Yet, it (federal government) is basically in a state of willful blindness to a major threat to the future of the country.”

    Canada signed onto the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and committed to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. However, Environment Canada’s latest emissions trends report released last fall projects Canada will slowly drift away from that target as the economy grows, unless more is done to reduce emissions.

    Greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands, the fastest growing source of carbon pollution in Canada, increased approximately 62 per cent between 2005 and 2011, to 55 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, from 34 million tonnes.

    Oilsands emissions are projected to nearly triple between 2005 and 2020, to 101 million tonnes, according to Environment Canada.

    Since coming to power in 2006, the Harper government has repeatedly promised to introduce greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas sector. However, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and successive environment ministers have repeatedly delayed those rules.

    The data from Natural Resources Canada on melting ice caps support what other international assessments have concluded in recent months.

    Data compiled by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, based at the University of Colorado Boulder, revealed that summer Arctic sea ice in 2013 was more than one million square kilometres below the average observed between 1981 and 2010.

    Also, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in fall 2013 that “human influence has been detected” in the warming of the atmosphere and ocean, reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise as well as changes in some climate extremes.

    The report, approved by most governments around the world, including the Conservative government, concluded human activity — largely through greenhouse gases released from the consumption of fossil fuels as well as deforestation and other land-use changes — had “very likely contributed to Arctic sea ice loss since 1979.”

    jfekete@postmedia.com

    Twitter.com/jasonfekete

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