The Geography of the REE

Abstract

As a last step in this work the initial picture of a Geography of the REE shall be drawn. The initial idea was to get a world map with the locations of REE starting from the geological side, i.e. the physical occurrences of the minerals and then proceeding via the production steps to manufacturing of the consumer products to their use. Eventually the REE get back into the production cycle or end up dissipating or getting stored somewhere. This map would of course get a good idea about the recycling potentials, both in space and time. However the analysis of this work could only discover a modest share of Nd use so that such a map in this state of research can only be very approximate and incomplete. Despite these shortcomings such a map has been tried to set up; kind of as a starting point with the intent to amend the data in the succession of further research.