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Credit: Capital Refractories.

I am currently in Missouri at the St. Louis Section/Refractory Ceramics Division 47th Annual Symposium that runs through March 24, 2011.

The organizers, who include people such as Mary Reidmeyer (Missouri S&T), James Hemrick (Oak Ridge National Lab), Dave Tucker (CE Minerals) and Ben Markel (Resco Products), put together a stellar schedule that includes presentations from Dale Zacherl from Almatis, Rajan Srinivasacharya from Momentive Specialty Chemicals, Xiaoyong Xiong from Imerys-Damrec, Jeff Smith from Missouri S&T and Victor Carlos Pandolfelli from Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos.

At lunch, the St. Louis Section will honor The Refractories Institute’s Rob Crolius with the T.J. Planje Award, named in recognition of the contribution to the former dean of what years ago was called Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, the precursor to Missouri S&T.

While the ACerS groups’ refractories symposium has racked up nearly 50 years of recognizing cutting edge research and academic—industry partnerships, it was just pointed out to me that, coincidentally, China will be holding its 1st International Refractory Production and Application Conference May 10-12, 2011 in Guangzhou.

China’s refractory efforts are worth monitoring. Clearly, at lot of refractories attention is going to be aimed at that nation’s steel industry and basic metal production. But, at the risk of sounding like I am repeating myself, it is worth remembering that the Chinese Academy of Science recently announced its goal of transforming its status from world participant to world leader.

Indeed, one of the leading topics at the China’s first refractories conference will be the “status and outlook into the development during the 12th Five-year Plan period [2011-2016] of China’s refractories industry.”

Aside from applications such as blast furnaces, continuous casters, high power electric arc furnaces, etc., organizers of the conference say they intend to also cover refractories for non-ferrous metals, cement, glass and ceramic industries, plus green, monolithic, low-carbon and non-carbon refractories.

The lesson, perhaps, is that the West must not get so wrapped up in the thrill of the more whiz-bang, high tech ceramics and glass sectors that it forgets about the fundamental work that must continue in the refractories field. China, India, Russia are poised to be challengers in world markets and world research. Refractories R&D needs to be vigorously supported in the United States, Europe and South America in order for it to continue to contend with investments and commitments being made elsewhere.

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Chinese rare earth exports, 2009-2011, in metric tons:

First the good news: China appears to be increasing rare earth export quotas for the first half of 2011 - compared to the second half of 2010 – by over 80%. The bad news: The new quotas represent a 35% drop compared to the same period in 2010, and a 33% drop compared to the first half of 2009.

In other words, the short term may be a small improvement over the previous six months, but nevertheless a change that is not inconsistent with recent declines in the output of rare earth elements from China.

Where China ultimately is going with these REE quotas in 2011 isn’t clear, nor does recent history provide any clear cut guide. For example, quotas in 2009/H2 actually increased by 31% over 2009/H1 (28,417 metric tons versus 21,728 tons, for a year total of 50,145 tons).

The influential Bloomberg New Service reported on the quota this morning, headlining (and inaccurately reporting the numbers - Bloomberg editors don’t read their own archive) the story as an 11% cut.

On the other hand, one of the writers at the Rare Metal Blog took the “glass half full” approach with the story, “China INCREASES export quota by 82%” (emphasis in the original).

Traders on some stock exchanges thought they could read China’s mind and early in the day share in U.S. mining company Molycorp shot up by about 12% compared to the previous day’s closing price.

But, according to a New York Times story posted this afternoon (with accurate numbers), China apparently wants to head off some of the gloom:

“In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011 … The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.

“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.”

Apparently the reassurance worked: Molycorp’s closing stock price was a decline of 6%

Although some speculate about economic and business decisions are behind these moves, Chinese officials have recently been saying that environmental concerns are a factor in making quota decisions. Again, from the NYT:

“Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.

A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.

‘The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,’ said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.’

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Prototype energy-efficient home designed by Michelle Kaufmann, on display at the
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Credit: Kaufmann and Wikipedia Commons.

The DOE has announced the details on the third of three U.S.–China Clean Energy Research Centers, a multi-year joint a consortium on energy-efficient building technologies. The agency says that the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will lead the effort and will receive $12.5 million over the next five years. As with the first two CERCs that were announced early in September, this project will end up with a total of $50 million in funding over five years (including $12.5 from nongovernmental U.S. sources and $25 million from China to support that nation’s researchers.

Consortium members include Oak Ridge National Lab, MIT, University of California-Davis, National Resources Defense Council, Energy Foundation, ICF International, National Association of State Energy Officials, Association of State Energy Research and Technology Transfer Institutions, Dow Chemical, Honeywell, General Electric, Saint-Gobain, Bentley, ClimateMaster and Pegasus Capital Advisors.

Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy & International Affairs David Sandalow predicts the CERCs will “create new export opportunities for American companies, ensure the United States remains at the forefront of technology innovation, and help to reduce global carbon pollution.”

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U.S. and Chinese energy officials announced plans for cooperative clean energy research centers in July 2009.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the formation of two new joint United States—China Clean Energy Research Centers to focus on clean coal and clean vehicle technology. Each CERC is expected to be backed by $50 million over the next five years composed of both government and non-government funds.

The Obama administration and Chinese leaders announced plans to form three energy-related consortia in July 2009, and the DOE started accepting proposals in March of this year. Chu says the third CERC group will be announced later this fall.

The original CERC concept is one that would “facilitate joint research and development on clean energy by teams of scientists and engineers from the U.S. and China, as well as serve as a clearinghouse to help researchers in each country.” The plans also mentioned have one CERC headquarters in each country.

The aim of the Clean Coal CERC consortium is to develop and test new technologies for carbon capture and sequestration, and the group will be led by West Virginia University. Participating U.S. institutions and businesses include the University of Wyoming, University of Kentucky, Indiana University, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, National Energy Technology Lab, World Resources Institute, U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum, General Electric, Duke Energy, LP Amina, Babcock & Wilcox and American Electric Power.

The third consortium is expected to one that focuses on energy efficiency in building and construction.

The Clean Vehicles consortium, led by the University of Michigan, includes Ohio State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sandia National Laboratories, Joint BioEnergy Institute, Oak Ridge National Labs, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Chrysler, Cummins, Fraunhofer, MAGNET, A123, American Electric Power, First Energy and the Transportation Research Center.

The DOE announcement states that the Chinese partnering institutions and companies for each consortia will be announce “in the coming months.”

DOE is splitting $25 million between the two groups. This is being matched by funds from the grantees. In addition, China will provide an equal amount of funding, such that each consortia will end up with a budget of around $50 million. The $100 million total represents a significant increase over the $12.5 million originally pledged.

The DOE adds that the U.S. government monies will be used only for work performed by U.S. “institutions and individuals.”

The agency says it already manages 12 science and technology agreements with China.

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Lanthanum

This falls into the “must read” category. A few weeks back, I posted on major cuts in China rare earth exports. Science magazine’s  Robert F. Service provides more context:

“. . . Obama declared that the plant “is a symbol of where Michigan is going, … of where Holland is going, … of where America is going.”

That is, unless it runs into a Chinese brick wall.

This month, China announced that it will cut exports this year of rare-earth elements (REE) by 40%, leaving demand outside China exceeding the supply for the first time ever. Combined with Chinese export tariffs of 10% to 25%, the policy could ground fledgling efforts to build clean-energy industries in the United States and other Western countries. ‘It will just be untenable to compete’ with companies based in China, says Jeffrey Green, president of J. A. Green and Co., a government-relations firm in Washington, D.C., specializing in rare earths.

[ . . . ]

Although one of the most abundant rare earths, lanthanum could be hardest hit by China’s new export controls, which cap overall exports. Observers worry that companies, to increase profits, may try to export more high-value REEs, such as dysprosium and terbium, and drastically reduce lower-value elements such as lanthanum. That change, in turn, could result in price hikes for some elements.”

 

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