Making Magnets - The Geology of Neodymium
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
Chris Bolhuis: Dr. Jesse Reimink. How are we doing today?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hi, Christopher.
Chris Bolhuis: are we doing? Why, why are you laughing?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I don't know,
Chris Bolhuis: I've meant that in the most sincere way.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I know, I know. You're, anything if not sincere, maybe 20% of the time, 20% of the time. It works every time that [00:00:30] you're sincere
Chris Bolhuis: uh, I don't know if I like that stat. Actually.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh goodness. Hey, what's going on, man?
Chris Bolhuis: Not a whole lot. It's been a really gloomy day, so I'm glad we're recording because I know it has been.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's the same thing here. Oh. Woke up. And it's just low hanging clouds. My office in our building, in our, uh, in the geology building is on the fourth floor. And, you know, I look out and I have a, like a somewhat of a decent view. Like I kind of get a little angle of the mountains in Pennsylvania here, but man, I couldn't even see the, [00:01:00] the ridges in the distance. And they're not that far away. Just low hanging clouds. I couldn't see the buildings downtown. It was just gloomy and spitting rain. Oh, brutal.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Plus you're, you're setting behind you. You look like you're in a hospital room. Honestly, you have nothing. you need to do better with this. This is, it depresses me. Looking at where you're sitting right now. You're sitting in a bedroom with,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: What's wrong with my
Chris Bolhuis: nothing. It is, it is sterile. Come
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a, you know, wood paneled recording studio in my basement you know, [00:01:30] you, you need like whiskey and cigar bar behind you there, chris, to really
Chris Bolhuis: I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the.
Chris Bolhuis: actually, yeah, actually I do. First of all, it's not wood paneled. It's tongue and groove naughty pine. So don't, don't downgrade me. Please, sir. Oh, gosh. All right,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh goodness. Well, we should probably get started here with some geology
Chris Bolhuis: go. Let's go. What are we talking about today, Jesse?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: this is an episode that's near and dear to my heart, and you're gonna have to work really hard to keep me outta the weeds. You're gonna be tugging on, you're gonna be tugging, you got the shot [00:02:00] color button, you know, and to buzz me back to reality here a little bit, um, we're talking about neodymium, and this is a word that people struggle to pronounce, but the way to pronounce it is just like it reads, neo dim mim is the way to pronounce it.
Chris Bolhuis: Correct. for Jesse, give us the over arch. Why is this important? First of all, like, you know, why, well, you had to pitch me on this. I'm like, okay, let's do it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, why? It's the great question and the question we [00:02:30] try and center ourselves around, right Chris is why, um, neodymium is a really important element, uh, and it's an element, it's what's called a rare earth element, and it falls into this category of minerals that's really important called critical minerals, which we consider really important for society. Um, in,
Chris Bolhuis: oh, hold on. Let me interject real quick Bring this back to Nadal Nassar, our interview with Rare Earth Elements and the head of the US GS department [00:03:00] that surrounds this idea, right? Like, go back to that interview. It is, that I think is a must Before you listen to this, don't you think
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I agree that interview Nadal, uh, just has uh, just an unbelievable insight and one of the coolest jobs, what he's an industrial ecologist is what he called himself. I mean, totally cool. You can do whatever you want when you call yourself that, cuz who knows what that word means. Like, it's so interesting though. So yeah, absolutely. Go back and listen to that. So, Neodymium is important for our society. It is what [00:03:30] makes strong magnets and we use strong magnets all the time. In every electric motor that is produced currently uses strong magnets. So that's the, the sort of societal relevance of it. But also Neodymium is near and dear to my heart for research purposes. So we'll kind of end, I think, this episode with that.
Chris Bolhuis: okay. I want to get into that. Um, let's, I'm just gonna give a rundown then today of what we're gonna do. We are gonna start with the overview of the Neodymium market, and we're gonna do this in two different contexts. Okay?[00:04:00] Why it's important for. And why it is important for geoscience research, which you just touched upon. Then we're gonna end by talking about the geology, because this is a geo podcast, the geology of Neodymium. And by the way, neodymium is, capital n d on the period table, just for reference. So, yep. All right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's about it. Let's, let's just dive right in the uses of neodymium in society, and it really, it just boils down to the title of this episode, making [00:04:30] Magnets and Emia. Chris, I must admit, I don't really understand magnets. I don't know how they make magnets. I don't really kind of get how they work at a really deep physical level. But what I do ,
Chris Bolhuis: they're fun.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: they're so fun and they're so cool. But the other, the other thing I do know is that Neodymium Iron Boron also spelled the, if you, uh, link together, the elemental names, N D F E B magnets are the strongest magnets we really know how to make efficiently as a [00:05:00] society. So these are the strongest commercially available magnets at least, and we use magnets all the time in electric motors.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, right. We use 'em in hybrid electric motors. I drive a toyota Prius. It's in that, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Um, and Tesla uses this too, right? I mean, this is one of the things that makes the Tesla go so fast. So I have a question though, as I read what you wrote here for us, Has the technology evolved [00:05:30] in the modern years and recent years with this? Like, what have we done to advance magnets to make these motors so much more efficient? Do you know?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I don't think it's really in the magnet side. I, to my understanding, these Neodymium iron boron magnets have been around for a while, a couple decades at least. And really the, the efficiency driver that makes electrical vehicles, um, more efficient is actually the battery storage. So it's storing the power. And we can think, I think it's most useful, [00:06:00] Chris, to think about this in reverse. So think about wind turbines, wind turbines, use these types of magnets as well. so the way. Electricity is generated is by spinning magnets inside of a coil of electrical wire of copper wire, and that drives electrical current through the wire so that's what's going on inside of a wind turbine is the magnets are spinning with the propeller blades. The propeller blades are spinning the magnets inside and it's generating electricity. The opposite happens with a motor. You drive current through the wire, and then you have a [00:06:30] magnet sitting inside of that, and it spins around the magnet starts to spin inside of this circle of wire, basically. I mean, that's a really dumbed down version of it. But, I think that helps visualize how magnets are used in all kinds of electric motors.
Chris Bolhuis: So do they help it spin faster then? Is that what we're talking about? Efficiency of this rotation
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. strong strong magnets would presumably like respond, you know, more to the same amount of electrical current and have more torque and provide more torque to the system.
Chris Bolhuis: But I have [00:07:00] to say that when I was, you know, a student, a young student in college, right, we have to go way back. Right. Uh, neodymium was not, like, this wasn't something that was talked about. Right? This is relatively new. Do, do you know why that is?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I think the reason that that is, is because, you know, in the stone age when you're in college, um, the the, you know, we were, there were no [00:07:30] motors around anyway. No
Chris Bolhuis: to that. That's good. All right. I got you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: But in, in, seriously, in all seriousness, the, the things have changed. You know, internal combustion engines were what we're driving torque in all the vehicles, right? In most of the motors in your yard, right? You start up your lawnmower and you're using gasoline, start up your chainsaw using gasoline. Now you can buy the electric ones and those batteries, the batteries power this electric motor. And so we, we have an electric motor sitting inside of there, so we're just using, we're just making more electric [00:08:00] motors, so we need more knee dium.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. But I thought that, so when I buy this, right, because I'm doing this, I'm converting almost everything over to battery, right? I mean, I have a, uh, battery operated snowblower right now, and I, you know, my driveway okay. my, my driveway is super long. So yeah, I'm not doing that with that. I, I get it plowed, but I'm getting too old to do, you know, all the shoveling and I, I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm past that stage of my life. So I bought a [00:08:30] battery powered snowblower, but it says lithium on it. So what's the backstory there?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. So, okay. Yeah, this is the great point, Chris. Go back to lithium. Go back to our episode on lithium, the geology of lithium. We talk about that and, and that's making batteries. That lithium is where the charge is stored. The lithium ion batteries are where we're storing electrical charge. And then the neodymium magnets, these neodymium iron boron magnets, which were invented again, sort of in the eighties. So, [00:09:00] you know, to answer your question, They might not have been really the most common magnet type in electrical motors when you were in high school and going through the system. But now they are, now they're the most powerful magnet. And you have neodymium, , iron boron magnets, probably sitting in your snowblower. Uh, and then sitting in the, you know, leaf blower that I have that's electric and it's again, lithium ion battery. So the lithium storing the charge, the need is providing the motion
Chris Bolhuis: That Jesse, I, I'm gonna give you credit for this, like [00:09:30] really, really well done. I didn't know where you were gonna go when I asked the question, but you really gave a good explanation. Seriously, I'm, I'm being a hundred percent serious. This is me giving you credit right now.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take it where I can get it,
Chris Bolhuis: the lithium provides the power, but the motor is driven by the neodymium,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. That good? Good, good, good. , yeah, I actually am in the process of converting all of my tools and a [00:10:00] lot of things that I never even thought about two years ago, even jesse, to battery powered stuff with different motors, my drills, my reciprocating saw, my chain, saw, my snowblower. My son has a lawnmower that is battery powered. It's, and, and therefore neodymium motor, right? And it's crazy how good this stuff is, but it's so awesome, like the freedom of it, oh shoot, I just forgot one A leaf.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: know, [00:10:30] we just got done with this in the fall and, and it's, it is just as powerful. My 40 amp leaf blower is just as powerful as my gas powered one that I just sold on Facebook Marketplace. Like stuff, it's crazy. But Jenny, all she's gotta do, my wife, she couldn't, like, she had a hard time always starting the thing. You didn't gotta choke it, you gotta take the choke off and all this stuff, right? And then you gotta deal with bad gas on a carburetor. She's like, I just want to push a button.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. [00:11:00] So there
Chris Bolhuis: we can do this. It's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me ask you this, Chris, do you, have you gone sort of one brand where you have the interchangeable batteries that you can use between
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Yes. So this is a really interesting question. Um, I, we don't advertise yet on this show, but
Dr. Jesse Reimink: we don't. We don't.
Chris Bolhuis: um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris is going to right now, so
Chris Bolhuis: no, I'm really, I, I don't know, like for certain things I really like Milwaukee, because, you know, the, the batteries are, they're just, they're so good. they're [00:11:30] expensive. Okay. But I really, really like the Cobalt brand from Lowe's. It's much more affordable and I just, I think it's really, really good. And the thing is, is that it's, if you get into like buying batteries, the batteries are mo almost as expensive as the device itself. And what I have found is with the Lowe's Cobalt brand is that they, sell the tool and. The battery in certain packages [00:12:00] together. So once you get into it, you like, you kind of get roped in. You have to go with a certain brand because then, you know, once I have a 40 volt battery, I can use that interchangeably with all of my tools that uses that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah. And then you got one charger and you got a bunch of different batteries that are interchangeable For sure. I mean, that, it's a smart strategy. Um, I think I have a, I think it's an ego, I think, is it
Chris Bolhuis: Mm. Yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the kind of green
Chris Bolhuis: it a lawnmower?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah. I got a leaf blower, [00:12:30] so I got a leaf blower with that. And then, um, I actually just got for Christmas a um, uh, electric chainsaw and I'm blanking on what the brand is. I'm gonna have to try that out. Cause those little like, I don't know, is a chainsaw gonna have the, you know, really the torque to, to do a lot, but, well, I'll
Chris Bolhuis: they actually do.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: do they, okay,
Chris Bolhuis: They actually do. Yeah. I could not believe the power of this battery operated snowblower. I mean, so what, what got me thinking about this is one of my friends, a professor, one of my college [00:13:00] professors at Grand Valley has a battery operated rototiller. And I'm thinking, alright,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that's
Chris Bolhuis: hell? Yeah. That's serious torque, right? And to do that, he can use it for 30 minutes on one battery and that's like, that's pretty amazing. You know, it's just like, this is impressive.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So let's, let's kind of bring it back, Chris, that, that leads us nicely back into the, into the emia. But this is why you need a strong magnet, right, is to provide that torque. You need a lot of current going through with a strong magnet. So [00:13:30] that interaction between the electrical current spinning around and the magnet that wants to turn in there, you need to have a strong magnet so it gives more torque to the system. And so that's why Neodymium is really, really valuable at this current time. And I just wanna list a couple stats here.
Chris Bolhuis: Jesse, can I interject a second? Um, recently, well, I don't know, maybe recently, last couple years, Bucky Balls made their presence in the mo in the media. Okay. Because, uh, some kids swallowed 28, [00:14:00] 28 Bucky Balls. And so I think, well, first of all, so a Bucky Ball is a really powerful magnet. I don't, Jesse, do you know why they called him Bucky Balls? Like what
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, I have no idea. Actually. I, it might be some structural thing, but these are these little tiny like magnet balls that you could put together in a grid. They're super strong. You put 'em on like other sides of the table and they'll attract together and smash together. They're super, super strong.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry that was a random thought, but they, you know, I think they ended up [00:14:30] banning Bucky Balls because kids kept swallowing them, you know, and they're just, these are really strong , you know, neodymium magnets,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. And neodymium magnets are found in MRI machines. Actually, the United States F 35 fighter apparently contains 427 kilograms, Chris kilograms of rare earth elements of which Neodymium will be the biggest one, probably the most of
Chris Bolhuis: Well, yeah, for our American listeners, [00:15:00] uh, a kilogram is approximately 2.2 pounds, just .So it puts it in perspective like it's a lot. That's amazing. Uh, wow.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, so the, and I just think to highlight this, you know, like the fact that wind turbines have, these water turbines have these magnets, like a lot of the green economy is based on these super strong magnets either. Extracting energy, extracting electricity from like wind and stuff like that, or converting that electricity into power like we talked [00:15:30] about in all of our appliances, Chris. So it's
Chris Bolhuis: is really changing our lives, though. It has changed my life. I'm like, I have, I've sold more of my old tools on Facebook marketplace in the last two years than I ever would've imagined. Seriously, I'm, I'm trying to go totally to this direction because the convenience of it is absolutely life-changing. It's amazing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: for sure. And then if you have, green power coming into your grid, you know it's better as well to just [00:16:00] use that green power and dump the, uh, electricity into your little Milwaukee battery and then go around blowing the snow off your driveway. It's great.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's one of my son's dreams. Um, he put solar panels on his house in Virginia and he, wants to buy a Tesla then down the road and just power it with, you know, totally green energy. So, yeah. absolutely. Hey, one thing too, g, again, and this makes me think of the Nadal Nassar, , interview that we did last April. , China currently [00:16:30] supplies about 85% of the world's neodymium. , and they do this from about one or two locations, so we're talking worldwide, right? So that's a, an amazing stat. First of all, I think if you digest that, and then also it's a scary stat like that, that scares the hell out of me in terms of, you know, supply chain issues. I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: time that most of the world supply comes from one or two places in one or two countries, It's, a not a stable [00:17:00] supply chain. And that goes back to the critical part of Neodymium being a critical element or a critical mineral, is that, we gotta worry about the supply chain. We gotta, like, it might not be that stable. Uh, it might not be only up to, the, the, um, supply demand processes here. You know, there are other forces at play. So I think, Chris, that, should we go into the geology of Neodymium and then talk about the scientific, uh, uses of neodymium, because I think the geology kind of sets the stage a little bit. Is, is that
Chris Bolhuis: I think [00:17:30] that's a good plan. That's a good plan. I gotta say. Uh, this is your territory. Okay. Uh, holy crap. You are, you're really nerding on Mihir. Um, so, but I, but I do love this stuff, honestly. My knowledge is, uh, a little limited here. , I can contribute, but you're definitely carrying this part of it for sure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, let's put it this way, Chris. I've spent the [00:18:00] last, uh, about eight years of my life studying knee dim where it is in the earth a bit. So,
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. That's, you know what, I, I actually, actually, did not know that. you just, I did not know that until just a second. we don't, we don't have that very often where I don't know something about you and you don't know something about me, so, okay. All right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: So, Jesse Neodymium is a rare earth element. It's like ridiculously small in the, in [00:18:30] terms of the total earth, it's about 400 parts per billion. So that means out of a billion atoms, 400 of them out of a billion, this is ridiculously small, are gonna be neodymium and. It is also a litho file. And this, this reminds me of something because back when we talked about, um, what were we talking about Iridium, I think we were talking about iridium, weren't we? And you said that [00:19:00] iridium is a siderophile. And I like that term. And I asked you to call me sidero because it means iron loving. And you know, I'm, I think of myself as like iron, hardened iron, you know? But you,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes, chris, you are for, you are forged, as in steel is forged, aren't you? Yes. Okay. Okay.
Chris Bolhuis: I know. Anyway, can I ask the question? Please? Couldn't inter couldn't interrupt me. So it, it is a litho file, [00:19:30] litho, which I, I get this. which means that it likes scates and litho. Is the lithosphere. So, which means that it has to love the very outer. Part of the Earth, right? Is that that good? Okay. Go. All right. I'm unleashing you. So go.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: was, was that a question?
Chris Bolhuis: Well, no, Brit wasn't. Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. All right. Can I, let me, can I, back up? Can I back up really quickly, Chris? I just wanna back up to rare [00:20:00] Earth element really quickly cuz I just wanna set the stage for where we are in the periodic table. So the rare earth elements are a suite of elements that are at the bottom of the periodic table. So they're that kind of, there's two rows of the periodic table that are often like pulled out and pasted at the bottom of the periodic table. And uh, that's where neodymium resides. It's kind of on the left side of the top bar of those elements down to bottom called the rare earth elements. So it is one of like 13 or 14 rare earth elements there.
Chris Bolhuis: Can I ask you a question a minute? [00:20:30] I'm gonna interrupt you. , so back in the day when I was in college, those little pasted things at the bottom of the periodic table. We never paid any attention to that at all. Now, now, like everybody does, right. Did you, when you were a beginning young student, did you pay attention to those at all? Or this, or is it newer than that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, I would say it's, I don't know if it's newer than that. It's just not introductory level stuff like this. I, I think I, we probably should have said this at the beginning. This is going to be a deep dive into isotope [00:21:00] geochemistry. , we're gonna go into like graduate level isotope geochemistry here. If I have my way. So this is not something you'll find in a basic geology course or on our, you know, camp Geo platform, for instance. You're
Chris Bolhuis: by the way, Jesse, I did catch the, the Snyder remark you made there. No, this is on, it's on, it's not gonna be an introductory level. So you're saying that all of my chemistry education was done at an intro level. Wow, that hurt more than a little bit. Okay. [00:21:30] For all of you listeners that are like, you know, minors and maybe you know, lower majors in chemistry, Jesse just said you don't
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, no. Chris, I think if you listen carefully, I put my own education in that category. I didn't learn this stuff about need Dium until I was well in my PhD, well, on my way to my PhD. Uh, so this is not intro-level stuff, and I didn't get it in intro-level, uh, classes either. So, okay. The question I believe was something about lit file and then you [00:22:00] had, and, but mostly
Chris Bolhuis: yes. So
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think was really your question,
Chris Bolhuis: okay, that's not the question. My question is actually this. Is a litho file or is Neo dim? is this like compatible with the deeper parts of the earth, like the liquid Otter core and the inner core? Is that a thing or not? Because we said that that Ciro is, that's why it went there. right. And this is different.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right, Chris. So litho file literally [00:22:30] means rock lover in rock in our world, in our planet means silicates, , iron or metal, iron lover ciro file. So any element that likes bonding with iron will be in the core. And you brought up iridium, uh, platinum. There's a whole bunch of different metals that love bonding with iron that'll be in the core instead of the mantle. So when the earth initially differentiated, we had an episode on how to build a planet a while back, where we talked about when the core formed. Uh, when the core formed neodymium did not go into the core, [00:23:00] it stayed in the mantle, in the silicate part, the litho silicate, rocky part of the planet.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, I get you. so actually now I want to change, I don't want to be called Ciro anymore. I want to be called litho because I am the rock lover. So can you do that? Uh, You can call me
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris. There is no human on this planet who is more lit file than you are. I You are the most lit file. We need T-shirts.
Chris Bolhuis: um, I,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: litho file.
Chris Bolhuis: that is a really good idea, by [00:23:30] the way. I love t-shirts. I do and I love t-shirts that are clever, so I am gonna do something with that. let me go with this then I have another question. For you then. Okay. so it gets concentrated in the crust then, is what you said, right?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so far we've gotten concentrated in the silicate part. It's not in the core. It's in the mantle and above. Yep.
Chris Bolhuis: . So, okay, like what kind of parts per million are we talking about here? We said 400 overall. 400 parts per billion. What is it like in the crust then? It's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah,
Chris Bolhuis: higher [00:24:00] cuz it's litho,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. It's 1.5 parts per million. Now in earth's mantle, so there's, if you take that 400 parts per billion, that's the total earth, but there's basically none in the core. So that means it's concentrated in the silicate part, in the mantle, it's like 1.5 parts per million. And then in the continental crust, we have the mantle, we melt the mantle to form basaltic oceanic crust. We melt the basaltic oceanic crust to form continental crust. In the continental crust, it's 27 parts per million. [00:24:30] And that's, a substantial amount more than 400 parts per billion, what? 400 parts per billion is 0.4 parts per million. So 27 is a lot more than point.
Chris Bolhuis: Is this then, because we've talked about this before in previous episodes, is this just differentiation
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly. Exactly, Chris. Exactly. And the key here is that neodymium, when it's in the mantle, it likes being in silicates more than in metal. So it likes silicates more than [00:25:00] iron, uh, but once it's in silicates, it would, it doesn't really love being in silicates. It would just rather be there than an iron. In fact, when silicates melt, it would rather be in the melt than in the mineral. So the neodymium goes in the melt during all these partial melting processes.
Chris Bolhuis: It just doesn't have a choice at the, when it comes down to the end, it doesn't have a choice because that's the colder part of the earth and that's where it goes. Um, I just want to, for our listeners again, uh, terminology [00:25:30] wise, silicates, when Jesse and I refer to silicates, we're talking about minerals like quartz and feldspar horn blend, biotite. Aite, you know, the puric scenes. Okay. Olive, , those are the scates that we're talking about. So we're talking about very common minerals, in other words. Right. Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: built on silicon and oxygen bonds.
Chris Bolhuis: other question then for you. Okay. What happens because earth goes, has, [00:26:00] at least in the early part of earth history, has been melted or resurfaced. So what happens then to like Neodymium?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Every time. Yeah, I, I mean, every time the earth melts neodymium gets enriched in the molten part. So you know, the mantle is partially melting to form oceanic crust, 15 to 20% partial melt in that 15 to 20%. Most of the ne dium goes in there, which [00:26:30] means the oceanic crust has more neum in it. So every time the earth melts this neodymium gets enriched in the melt phase. So it is exact exactly what you said, Chris. It is this distillation process. Neodymium is being distilled every time the earth melts
Chris Bolhuis: Cool. All right. I get it. I, I get it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Chris, I think it's now time to sort of bring in these weird minerals and rare earth elements. I mean, you described this really well that uh, when we talked about pegmatites, that all the elements that don't fit [00:27:00] the misfits, they all get together and form random minerals that are not common minerals. They're not biotite or quartz or Amal. They're the weird ones. And there are weird minerals that are made up of rare elements plus some anion, some other part. And so we have rare-earth-element, the phosphates, which is a mineral called monazite. This is a rare-earth-element at phosphate. It's v. Fairly common. I mean, it's not that common. It's occurs at like fractions of a percentage of a rock, but it occurs in a bunch of different rocks. [00:27:30] We actually date this in our lab. Um, you know, gem quality monazite is not the prettiest mineral, actually , um, you know, it's, it's not that interesting. It's very useful for science cuz it has uranium and no lead you can date the uranium lead system. But, there are other rare th at mineral groups. Um, so for instance, like what other ones might contain rare thumbs, Chris?
Chris Bolhuis: Oh, well actually I wanna jump back to something that you said. So monocyte is a phosphate, I wanna define what that means. It's P four three negative [00:28:00] minerals are put into groups according to the dominant ion that's present. Phosphates are one of those. It's P four. Sulfates are another one. That's s o four. Silicates is another one, and that's s i o four. So it's that dominant ion that allows us to categorize the mineral groups. And there are only, you know, I'm gonna say two handfuls of mineral groups that exist on, at least in the [00:28:30] crust. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right.
Chris Bolhuis: know, I just thought I would interject
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's exactly right, Chris. So monazite is a rare element plus three charge, plus a. P oh four minus three charge bonded together. That's a neutral bond. Great. That can make a mineral. So they build a mineral out of that. And that's, uh, monazite and that is actually mined in some of these places. You can have monazite sand. It's a pretty heavy mineral. It's like zircon uh, in the erosion process. It can be concentrated in certain locations, and so you can get monazite [00:29:00] sand that can be economical to mine for neodymium or for rare earth elements.
Chris Bolhuis: Alright, so I have another question for you. apatite A mineral that I love, apatite to me looks like a green Jolly Rancher, like one of those sour apple Jolly Ranchers. Okay. That's how I think of it. Is that right? I think it works. It has a decent amount of rare earth elements, but not as much as mon I love apatite. Um, I have a question for you before, [00:29:30] like you can talk a little bit about apatite. Not much, and then I want to get to my next question for you, but I took apatite out of my mineral sets for my geology students. Is that a good call or should I put it back in?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Ooh, good call. I
Chris Bolhuis: would never have it in your class
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No.
Chris Bolhuis: you don't have time for that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: no, no. no. I mean, we cover only the basic rock forming minerals to 10. yeah, apatite. I, I would say good. I mean, it's rare people have to identify apatite,
Chris Bolhuis: [00:30:00] Mm.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: even if they're working in any industry.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. So that's beside the point.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So I think it's good to take it out, Chris, but it, you know, it, it's not really an economic deposit of rare thumbs, but it does have it in there. So apatite is, you know, basically your teeth. I mean, it's the same compound as your teeth, but natural rock forming apatite, we'll take, it'll suck up some of the rare elements that don't fit in the other minerals in a rock. The most important mineral, perhaps for rare earth elements is one
Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. Can I try to No, no, no, no. I wanna try to pronounce this. [00:30:30] Can you not do that? All right. So , like, don't step on my toes. Um, I've never heard of this mineral before, but I did watch a 60 minutes episode on the Mountain Pass mine. Um, and I don't think they mentioned the mineral. Anyway,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: probably cuz it's impossible to pronounce.
Chris Bolhuis: I'm looking at it. Is it Ba
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I.
Chris Bolhuis: Basy.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I've heard it pronounced bass naite, which sounds bass, naite, bass, nasta site. [00:31:00] I mean, there's various pronunciations, but um, there's an unla in there. You know, , it's a very interesting word.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Wow. all all right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I typed this into our script, so I didn't have the unla character on my keyboard, but yeah, I think there's a Nolo somewhere in there. But this is a, basically a rare themic carbonate. So it's, has some cesium in there, but it's a rare themic carbonate has some oh, groups and flooring on the backside, but it's a carbonate. And this is the one that the mountain pass mine in California, which was gonna shut down. [00:31:30] I think it did shut down for a while. Production now it might be back up and running with the, um, build back better initiative. I'm not really sure. Uh, but it contains something like eight to 12% of the rock is rare. Thelma oxide, like really
Chris Bolhuis: gosh. That's a huge, wow. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Massive amount of, rare
Chris Bolhuis: also kind of a controversial mine if i,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: controversial. yeah. I mean, like most mines Um, and so I, I think, you know, bass Naite is a mineral [00:32:00] bass. Naite is a mineral that is, uh, really, if you're sort of researching Neodymium nu thema, it's a mineral that people care about and are looking to mine because it's so highly concentrated. I just want to talk about one last thing, Chris, is that when it comes to mining, neodymium, or prospecting, you're not looking for just neodymium. Like Neodymium never occurs by itself. It occurs with all the other rare earth elements. Like they occur together as a cohort and we're after neum. And so a [00:32:30] lot of. Economic calculations that go into deciding, Hey, is this going to be a mine? Depend not only on neodymium, but they also depend on the price of cerium, the price of samarium, like the market value of the other rare earth elements in that particular mineral. So it gets really, really complicated to forecast, , profits and losses in lifetime of a mine when it comes to this rare ment stuff. Because they all occur as a group together.
Chris Bolhuis: so we're able to separate the cerium from the [00:33:00] neodymium and all of this stuff using chemical
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes. but it is much more difficult to separate neodymium a rare the from its neighboring rare, the samarium or cerium, because they're so similar chemically, they occur together in rocks because they're so similar chemically. Whereas gold is relatively easy to separate from iron because they're very different element.
Chris Bolhuis: It would maybe be like separating Azure right From Malachite. From Chrisa Cola,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes,
Chris Bolhuis: all copper oxides
Dr. Jesse Reimink: All [00:33:30] copper stuff. Yep, For
Chris Bolhuis: okay. Okay, okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: to separate them.
Chris Bolhuis: Wow. Interesting. Okay, Jesse, doctor,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: hi.
Chris Bolhuis: This brings us to the last part of this episode, which are the scientific uses for neodymium for research. and this is your rabbit hole.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Okay. So for the next two,
Chris Bolhuis: Hold on. stop.
Chris Bolhuis: stop.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: we got two and a
Chris Bolhuis: Oh my gosh.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: this [00:34:00]
Chris Bolhuis: We don't have a lot of time. We're already running a little long in the tooth. So we gotta cut this down, right? Give us a rundown on this. And I'm just going, I'm gonna play host here. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Sure. Okay, alright. So we've talked about uranium lead and various radiometric dating systems, right?
Chris Bolhuis: de. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yep,
Chris Bolhuis: decaying to lead. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's exactly right. And the ratio of uranium to lead gives us the h. We can use that. And that's a clock right [00:34:30] now. Samarium is a rare earth element. Sm sumari is a rare ment. It occurs very close to Neodymium, in the periodic table. And cerium decays to neodymium. So 1 47 the isotope, 1 47 samarium decays to the isotope. 1 43 neodymium. And
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it decays
Chris Bolhuis: alphas?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the, that is one. One alpha decay 1 47 to 1 43. That's the atomic mass there. Yep, so one alpha decay has a half life [00:35:00] of about 106 billion years, which is extremely long. Which means that for our purposes, our four and a half billion years of earth history, this is a straight line. Like the exponential decay is just a straight line. Okay, so why do we care about this? Well, first of all, some people use this as a clock. It works in specific instances to be a clock that that decay of 1 47 to 1 43, works like a clock. the bigger use is actually as an what we [00:35:30] call an isotope tracer. And so let's say, Chris, I know the age of a rock and it's two and a half billion years old, that rock a magma crystallized two and a half billion years ago. But I want to know what melted to form
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, so interject real quick. You know that it's two and a half billion years old because of some other like uranium to lead decay method.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly.
Chris Bolhuis: samarium to neodymium,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. We're using something [00:36:00] else. Yep. Either uranium lead or maybe samarium, but we're using usually something else to determine the age two and a half billion years old. It's a granite. It's sitting there. I wanna know what melted, what came before that granite. What melted to form that granite? Was it oceanic crust? Was it the mantle and it the mantle fractionated to form this granite? Or was it some really, really old, the first crust on earth that melted to form that granite. Okay. So that's kind of the question. I'm not looking at the rock itself. I'm looking at what came [00:36:30] before it, what was its parent, and this is where samarium-neodymium is really beneficial because samarium neodymium have slightly different chemistries. And so when the mantle melts this differentiation process, you melt the man. We have this partial melting. 15% of the mantle melts and we form oceanic crust with that both samarium and neodymium want to go into the melt stage, want to go into the magma, but samarium wants to just a little bit less so more samarium stays behind [00:37:00] than Neodymium does
Chris Bolhuis: Fractionation.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly, fractionation? So the two elements are fractionated for one another a little bit too. So what does that do Over a long period of time, the mantle has a.
Chris Bolhuis: give a crack at this? so it enriches neodymium and diminishes samarium relative to each other,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Exactly, exactly, exactly where I'm going with that. So if we did this process 4 billion years ago, the mantle [00:37:30] melts and we form oceanic crust and we form a depleted mantle. The mantle that
Chris Bolhuis: I get it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: neodymium. Okay. You know where we're
Dr. Jesse Reimink: going with this,
Chris Bolhuis: I get it. I get it. This is awesome. All. I want everybody to know, like you were, we did not really discuss this. Actually, we didn't at all. I didn't. I had no idea. no we have not. Um, I freaking love doing this podcast with you. Like I, I know I said that, but like, this is [00:38:00] super fun for me because I'm just watching you work over there and I'm watching your little brain work over there. I love it. Um, and I'm able to follow it, like
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. So what, so let me, let me, I'm gonna turn the tables cuz you've been asking me this all episode. So let's say that happened 4 billion years ago. That oceanic crust, what is it gonna look like two and a half billion years ago? One and a half billion years
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So looking at ratios of samarium to Neodymium to [00:38:30] determine where it came from. That makes sense to me. Um, so you're able to determine age using a different method. probably probably not samarium to Neodymium, but you are using the ratio of the two to determine the parent essentially of, of where this stuff came from. And that is, oh my god, that is freaking cool. So I love that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: let's, play this forward a little bit here just to kind of [00:39:00] complete the cycle here. If we think about that 4 billion years ago, we have oceanic crust formed primary crust, basaltic crust, and we have a depleted mantle. The mantle has slightly higher samarium to neodymium. There's more samarium relative to neodymium than there was before in that mantle and in the crust. Conversely, there's less samarium compared to neodymium. So I told you initially that samarium decayed to neodymium decayed to 1 43 neodymium. So the mantle is going to, there's more samarium [00:39:30] to neodymium in there. So 1 43 neodymium is going to grow more rapidly in the mantle. Than it is in the crust because the crust has less samarium compared to neodymium. So these two things, even though they formed from the same mantle when they formed 4 billion years ago, the crust, if you think of a chart where 1 43 neodymium is on the Y-axis, the mantle is going to shoot up really quickly and the crust is gonna kind of flat line and not increase very rapidly at all. So if we fast forward to 2.5 billion years [00:40:00] ago and one of those rocks melted to form a granite, I can really easily tell the difference between a 4 billion year old mantle and a 4 billion year old piece of oceanic crust that could either one of those could have melted to form a two and a half billion year old rock.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: right? Like this, this is what we call isotope trac.
Chris Bolhuis: it, is, I'm, I'm tracking on you. Kay. I'm, I'm able to follow you, is there a way for you to, like, I'm only gonna give you a minute. Is there a way to like, distill this down just a little bit? I know Joyce is [00:40:30] not following this. My mom is, she's, she's napping right now. Okay. I'm able to follow, but I gotta really, like, I'm sitting on the edge of my seat right now. Okay. Like, this is exciting and I think this is so freaking cool, but I think we lost like a lot of people.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: okay, so let's, um, let's bring it home to something you really enjoy. You like Skittles,
Chris Bolhuis: I do
Dr. Jesse Reimink: am I right? you when you're driving that bus on summer science, I
Chris Bolhuis: Do I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a big old [00:41:00] jar of Skittle sitting right next to you to keep you awake, don't you?
Chris Bolhuis: I do. I love skittles. Yeah. It's the best candy. Yep.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: ski?
Chris Bolhuis: I, I, it's like picking a favorite kid. I, can't do that. Nope.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: come on. Gimme something for the analogy here. Orange. Okay. What's the least favorite?
Chris Bolhuis: purple.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Purple. All right, so Chris, orange and purple. I'm gonna have green and yellow. Okay, let's say you got your jar of Skittles there and you really love orange, right? And you really hate [00:41:30] purple. And so let's say you're sitting there, you're driving the bus, and over time you're eating these candies, right? You're kind of eating the ones you like, and you don't, you don't, eat the ones you do like. So let's say you're gonna take half of those. Hey, half your Skittles, and you're gonna say, all right, I, I don't want to eat the orange ones cause I wanna save 'em for later. And I'm gonna put a bunch of the orange ones and, okay, I, I didn't purely, uh, separate them. So I'm gonna put orange and green and purple and a little bit of yellow in one of the bins. And I'm gonna keep the other bin, you know, uh, the one I'm eating out of [00:42:00] actively here. And you're going to eat progressively, eat the orange ones. now that's kind of leaving the purples. behind, right? So that's kind of this sort of self-selection process. Now, if that's, that's the analogy. If you are actively consuming these things, but let's say all of the orange ones. Turn to purple over time at some fixed rate like they decay away. Now your jar that you set somewhere where you artificially enriched that in orange ones and you kept the, the, your jar that you're [00:42:30] actively eating out of has less orange ones in it. The orange ones are decaying to the purple ones, but it's decaying a lot less. You're producing less purple ones in your jar than the one you saved and tucked underneath your seat. There's a lot more purple being produced in that one because you put your, a bunch of orange ones in that jar and tucked it under your seat. Does that make sense?
Chris Bolhuis: So by eating the orange ones at a faster rate, I am enriching the purple ones left behind. And that's what's happening in the mantle. Correct.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. [00:43:00] Yep.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Now,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: then, then,
Chris Bolhuis: that correctly? Like that's in the, it's in the mantle, right? That it's enriched Did I say that correctly? Okay. Yes. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, Alright. Okay.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: enriched in the mantel. And chris,
Chris Bolhuis: Jesse J Hold on, hold on. Nope, Nope. I gotta give you credit, Jesse. I, ah, I've said this too many times this episode, but this has really been maybe one of the most like enlightening and fun episodes for me to do. seriously. And I [00:43:30] mean that, like, this is really cool since maybe the nuclear reactors episode, which if you don't remember that or didn't listen to it, go back to that. Cause that's one of the coolest factoids that that exist in, in geology. But Jesse, your analogy. Is spot on in your ability now to draw analogies. Jesse is growing by young sage.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, I've learned from the best over the last couple years here. So Chris, let me just tag one thing on here and maybe this will [00:44:00] you. Gimme 30 seconds.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, but okay, we're getting long,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: We're getting long. 30 seconds. Okay. I'm just gonna add into, based on that nuclear reactor thing, is that neodymium, this samarium-neodymium system, 1 47 Samarium gets the 1 43 Neodymium Halflife of a hundred billion years. It's just like uranium lead in that. There is another system, there is a samarium to neodymium system that is the short-lived one. That's just like the short-lived uranium lead. There's two isotopes of uranium that decayed, two isotopes of lead. There [00:44:30] were two isotopes of samarium that decayed to two isotopes of neodymium. There was an isotope, 1 46 samarium that decayed to 1 42 neodymium, and it had a halflife of a hundred million years. So within the first 500 million years of earth history, by 4 billion years ago, 1 46 samarium was dead. It was extinct. But what it does is we can go to rocks and we can look at 1 42 neodymium. And we can tell if that rock's source, the parent to that rock was [00:45:00] formed in the hadean in the first 500 million years of earth history. How cool is that? we can look at like a modern rock and say, Hey, did the source to this rock form when Earth was a baby? That to me is just mind blowingly Cool.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. freaking cool. All right. But some people, most of the people I think listening are lost on why.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Why? Yep. Good [00:45:30] question. So Chris, we've been doing this plate tectonics question series and we're about three in. We might have two or three to go. I can't remember, but we are about to cover if we haven't yet, when plate tectonics began on earth, and we actually have no idea when, well, we have some idea, but there's very little agreement on when plate tectonics started on earth and. Part of that question is, when did continents grow on earth? We don't really fundamentally understand when continents grew on earth. And this system, this clock that we've just described, [00:46:00] this, , tracer isotope system is great at tracing when continents grew on earth, or at least it's the step in the right direction. So that's kind of
Chris Bolhuis: Why it's important. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let's cook very quickly summarize here. We talked about neodymium is really important for society. Basically we make strong magnets with neodymium and that's really instrumental for the green economy and all of the electric motors that we have in our society. The geology of neodymium, it's enriched every [00:46:30] time the planet melts. And then we have some of these really weird minerals, rare-earth-elements phosphates and, and rare thumb carbonates that contained loads of rare-earth-elements that are actually the minable resources. Uh, and then we ended with a not too short summary of a graduate level crash course on the isotope geochemistry chemistry of neodymium and why it's useful for science so that's, uh, that's kind of a summary.
Chris Bolhuis: So, Jesse, this was a lot of fun for me this last [00:47:00] hour of you and I talking like I. I don't know. I feel invigorated. I learned a ton. I kept up for the most part. You know, you are definitely the doctor in the house here, and I love that about this. We bring such different things to this podcast and you brought it today. , you wrote this script and I read it all I did was read it and I had no really, [00:47:30] you know, we just kind of free balled this thing. we didn't, rehearse what we were gonna say at all, which we hardly ever do anyway. But, this was mentally very stimulating for me and just like fun, like, this reminds me of why I want to do this with you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, I mean, I Great. I'm I'm happy to hear that. The, It was super fun. I mean, the, you know, like I said, this is the last eight years of my life, . I've been studying this a lot in detail, so, um, near and [00:48:00] dear to my heart, I mean, it's, I'm glad it's not boring.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, anyway, I, yeah, no, it's not boring at all. I, I hope that we didn't lose a lot of people along the way. Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you did a good job keeping me outta the weeds and keeping me structured here
Chris Bolhuis: tried my best. I tried my best, but sometimes I get pulled into the weeds, you know, like, it's, it's not easy for me to like, stay outta that because I get sucked in by things that you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: man.
Chris Bolhuis: then I'm like, my mind goes, you know, and
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, yeah, totally.
Chris Bolhuis: don't know how to stop that, So,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So, [00:48:30] let's. Let's put it out there cuz um, if you have questions about neodymium, the geology of need dium, send us an email. Please send us an email, planet geo cast gmail.com. We love hearing those questions and we promise we will get to them eventually, even if we don't right away. , so shoot us an email, reach out on social media. We are at Planet Geo Cast on all the social medias. You can visit our website, planet geo cast.com. Go to Camp Geo if you want the basics. This is very in the weeds. This discussion here, if you want to go back to basics a little bit, go to Camp Geo, [00:49:00] college level, physical geology class, intro level class right there for you. Um, the link is in the show notes.
Chris Bolhuis: it's at the top of the show notes, and please share our podcast. it really helps us out and we enjoy that. So please share.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely. Leave us a rating and review and uh, go to our website. Cheers.
Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.
