Rare Earth Metals and Minerals Industries (eBook)

This book presents the current status and future prospects of rare earth elements with respect to a multitude of factors, including resource availability, production, and applications. Among the topics covered are the extraction of raw materials, alloying and compound production, applications, resource conservation through recycling, regulatory issues, and potential new resource streams. The chapters are authored by well-known technical experts in their fields, with decades of research, industrial, and governmental policy experience. 

The book is expected to serve as the first single source reference on rare earth minerals and metals aimed at students, scientists, technologists, government legislators, regulatory agencies, investors, and business leaders. It provides in-depth examination of the importance of rare earth elements to the global economy and their use in technological innovation, including energy, power, transportation, medicine, electronics, and chemical/petroleum industries.

Yellapu V. Murty, Ph. D, FASM: Dr. Murty, a Fellow of ASM and currently the President of MC Technologies LLC., provides materials consulting services. He is also an adjunct research staff member in the University of Virginia's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department.  Dr. Murty, with about half a century of industrial exposure, has been active in the R&D and manufacturing aspects of engineered materials, and their final applications. His main interests through the years focused on multifunctionality packaging optimum properties such as conductivity (electrical and thermal), corrosion/oxidation, light weight, magnetic, strength and toughness (ambient and harsh high temperatures), superelasticity, superplasticity, shape-memory, and resistance to high velocity penetration/shock waves, to meet final product's functional features. His industry exposure spans across electronics, energy, transportation, and specialty/critical materials sectors. He has worked for fortune 100 companies such as Carpenter Technologies, NGK Insulators, Tyco Electronics, as well as leveraging academia and government laboratories such as MIT, University of Illinois, and Sandia and Oak Ridge National Laboratories where he was instrumental in identifying key materials technologies and transitioning them into successful commercial products.            

Mary Anne Alvin: Mary Anne Alvin currently serves as the Critical Minerals Processing Program Manager at the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. She previously served as the Rare Earth Element Technology Manager at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Prior to joining NETL, Ms. Alvin was employed at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and at Siemens Westinghouse Power Generation, working in the area of advanced energy systems.  As a Fellow Scientist, she was internationally recognized for her contributions in the area of high temperature porous ceramic materials, ceramic matrix composites, intermetallics, advanced alloys and metal media for hot gas filtration use in the electric power generation industry. She holds twenty-eight patents in these areas.

Jack P. Lifton: Jack Lifton is currently an industrial consultant providing evaluation and due diligence studies of business operations in mining, refining, fabrication, and manufacturing in the metals and materials area. As a research scientist, technical operations/sales manager, a plant manager and the CEO in the OEM automotive electronics and minor metals industries with over four decades of direct experience, he gained a worldwide reputation as an expert in this area.  He has been a respected member of this community with a distinction among his peers.