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China discovers never-before-seen ore containing a highly valuable rare earth element

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A new ore, dubbed niobobaotite, was discovered in Inner Mongolia's Bayan Obo deposit.

a pile of silvery niobium, a rare earth element
China has discovered a new ore that contains the rare earth element niobium. Brazil is currently the world's largest supplier of niobium. (Image credit: RHJPhtotos/Shutterstock)

Scientists in China have unearthed a never-before-seen type of ore that contains a rare earth element sought after for its superconductive properties. 

The ore, dubbed niobobaotite, is made of niobium, barium, titanium, iron and chloride, the South China Morning Post reported. 

It's the niobium that is causing excitement: This light-gray metal is currently used mostly in the production of steel, which it strengthens without adding significant weight. Niobium is also used in making other alloys (materials made of mixes of metals) and can be found in particle accelerators and other advanced scientific equipment because it is a superconductor at low temperatures, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The deposit was found in the Bayan Obo ore deposit in the city of Baotou in Inner Mongolia on Oct. 3. The brownish-black ore is the 17th new type found in the deposit and one of 150 new minerals found in the region, according to the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).

Related: Is mining rare minerals on the moon vital to national security?

The discovery may be a windfall for China, which currently imports 95% of its niobium, according to the South China Morning Post.

"Depending on the volume and quality of this niobium it could make China self-sufficient," Antonio H. Castro Neto, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), told the newspaper. 

An aerial view of the Bayan Obo deposit where the new ore was discovered.  (Image credit: Getty Images)

Brazil is the world's largest supplier of the rare earth metal, with Canada a distant second. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a project to open a niobium mine and processing facility is underway in southern Nebraska. The Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project would be the only niobium mine in the U.S.

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The metal may also be in greater demand in the future, as researchers are working to develop niobium-lithium and niobium-graphene batteries. 

According to S&P Global, these batteries can reduce the risk of fires when used along with lithium. Niobium-lithium batteries also charge faster and can be recharged more often than traditional lithium batteries.

In May, researchers at the the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM) at the NUS, which is developing niobium-graphene batteries, said the batteries could last around 30 years — 10 times longer than lithium-ion batteries — and can fully charge in less than 10 minutes. 

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Stephanie Pappas
Stephanie Pappas
Live Science Contributor

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Space.com sister site Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Unclear Engineer
    Now, if the Psyche mission discovers a lot of niobium content in that "metal asteroid", there could be a great impetus for mining it. Or at least trying to find smaller hunks of the same stuff in the asteroid belt.
    Reply
  • fj.torres
    Unclear Engineer said:
    Now, if the Psyche mission discovers a lot of niobium content in that "metal asteroid", there could be a great impetus for mining it. Or at least trying to find smaller hunks of the same stuff in the asteroid belt.
    No need to go that far just yet. Earth's trojans are more accessible and screaming for visits.
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    I only knowo f 2 Earth trojans, and they aren't huge. Do we even know if they are metallic?

    While I understand the hypothesis that they probably did not differentiate, so "rare earth" elements would still be mixed into their surface materials. are the the hypothetical concentrations high enough to support the cost of retrieval to Earth? We already get meteorites for free, and I have not heard of anybody thinking they are going to be an important source of such elements. If they were rich in elements that we need, wouldn't it be cheaper to dig into impact craters than to send enough space infrastructure to mine trojans?
    Reply
  • fj.torres
    Unclear Engineer said:
    I only knowo f 2 Earth trojans, and they aren't huge. Do we even know if they are metallic?

    While I understand the hypothesis that they probably did not differentiate, so "rare earth" elements would still be mixed into their surface materials. are the the hypothetical concentrations high enough to support the cost of retrieval to Earth? We already get meteorites for free, and I have not heard of anybody thinking they are going to be an important source of such elements. If they were rich in elements that we need, wouldn't it be cheaper to dig into impact craters than to send enough space infrastructure to mine trojans?
    Two is not a logical number; zero, one, and "many" are but not two. If two, why not three? Or ten, a hundred, whatever... And if they're not there, planet formation theories are in trouble.

    Oh, and the newest found is almost a mile in size. That's industrial size.

    As to looking in craters (on the moon?) it requires less energy to send probes to L4 and L5 than the moon. Finally, the trojan asteroids aren't going to be clumped at the Lagrangians, but rather orbiting them at various distances. Makes them hard to find from earth. Which is why a mission to park a probe there is called for.
    Reply
  • Classical Motion
    Does it really take less energy to get to L4 and L5 than to the moon?
    Reply
  • Unclear Engineer
    To do a round-trip mission from Earth, it takes more energy to land on the Moon and return than it takes to go to a lower mass object like a half-kilometer diameter asteroid, grab a sample, and return. However, it takes longer to go the greater distances to the Earth's orbit Lagrange points.

    Earth "trojan" asteroids have been looked for, and, so far, only 2 have been found. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_trojan :

    "An Earth-based search for L5 objects was conducted in 1994, covering 0.35 square degrees of sky, under poor observing conditions. That search failed to detect any objects:

    "The limiting sensitivity of this search was magnitude ~22.8, corresponding to C-type asteroids ~350 m in diameter, or S-type asteroids ~175 m in diameter."In February 2017, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed a search from within the L4 region on its way to asteroid Bennu. No additional Earth trojans were discovered.
    "In April 2017, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft searched the L5 region while proceeding to asteroid Ryugu, but did not find any asteroids there."

    Of the 2 discovered so far, one is estimated to be 150-to-500 meters in diameter and the other is estimated at 1100-to-1260 meters, both at L4.

    While it is conceivable that asteroids of this size might be moved to Earth orbits if they turn out to be more firmly compacted than the asteroids we have been able to visit and sample or impact, so far, there would be some serious hazards associated with bringing a kilometer wide asteroid to low Earth orbit - some sort of guidance of thruster malfunction, such as we have seen in multiple recent launch and landing attempts, could put that asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

    So I expect initial visits will be scientific missions with sample return, and any mining missions would probably be scaled-up "samples" using similar strategies.

    Perhaps, some day, materials could be landed on the Moon for refining before descent to Earth's surface, or even refined in orbit around Earth or even out at L4 or L5. But, it is a tradeoff between getting the raw materials to Earth's surface vs getting refining and perhaps manufacturing infrastructure equipment out to where the raw materials currently reside so that only finished products need be descended to Earth's surface.
    Reply