Comments on: Supply Risks for 16 Materials Key to Clean Energy Technologies

By: jackass

jackass — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:07:00 +0000

This is a much bigger issue than it seems. There are several wind energy companies (such as Siemens) that have bet the farm on large direct-drive PM generator designs. And now the massive cost of rare earths for these large PM generators has made the economics of Siemen’s direct-drive turbines unacceptable.

Bad decision on their part.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:41:00 +0000

A possible help…

“Northeastern University researchers have designed a super-strong magnetic material that may revolutionize the production of magnets found in computers, mobile phones, electric cars and wind-powered generators.

“State-of-the-art electric motors and generators contain highly coercive magnets that are based on rare-earth elements, but we have developed a new material with similar properties without those exotic elements,” said coauthor Don Heiman, a physics professor in the College of Science.

For this study, the team of researchers, …, found that the compound manganese gallium can be synthesized on the nanoscale to produce a coercive field that rivals materials containing rare-earth elements, which are considerably more expensive to process and mine.”

http://www.northeastern.edu/news/stories/2011/12/magnets.html

By: Tommi Henriksen

Tommi Henriksen — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:16:00 +0000

The Chinese have rare earths sewn up at the moment, but more deposits have been found in Afghanistan. we need to keep researching other energy sources, rather than stick with the current batch.