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Hated Red Mud Could Prove a National Blessing
WORLDWIDE. waste Is ■ daunting problem. Jamaica may be small, but its alumina/bauxite Industry crates waste headaches relatively as serious as those facing the major industrialised
With one difference. It has been discovered that Jamaican red mud waste contains the biggest concentration of rare earths and phosphorous of any country in the world And rare earths are of growing importance in today's world They have been termed energy ma tertaie of the future
As a result of research In the Eighties the potential for Jamaica is only now coming to light
Bauxite Is the ore from which aluminium Is made The waste Is collected and dried In artificial ponds or In a valley dammed to form ■ lake One such spectacular red lake can
be seen on the main road from Kingston to the tourist havens on the north coast.
The ponds have a high content of caustic soda and arc highly dangerous The soda contaminates ground water with harmful effects on humans and animals. One spring near the town of Llnstead has been found to contain as much sodium as the red mud itself.
When the mud dries the caustic soda on the surface combines with carbon dioxide tn the air to form crystals of sodtum carbonate or bicarbon ate. These are blown away and people complain of the dust, which Is said to be harmful to living things as well as to the roofs of buildings One mining company has paid out a large sum In compensation
Attempts to find a use for the dry mud. such as bricks for houses, proved uneconomic.
but now the high mineral content of the red mud has opened up other possibilities.
Nearly half the mud Is Iron oxide and Jamaican industrialist and former minister Robert Lightbourne took out a patent with a Californian chemist for a process to produce iron form the mud.
Prospects looked so good the British company Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) provided bench space for Jamaican chemist Barclay Baez in its laboratories at Chessington In Britain.
The project proved unvi-abie, but later the US Department of Energy carried out a survey to find uranium and thorium (a radioactive mineral used to make gas mantles) and it came up with the rare earth discovery.
In 1986 a conference held in Kingston on "Bauxite Tailings" was attended by 100 sci-
entists from a dozen countries. It attracted interest in the scientific world, although only one commercial firm, in Nor-way, followed up the Information given to the conference on rare earths. It sent a field team to investigate.
No industrial commitment has yet resulted, but the presence of rare earths in Jamaica bauxite tailings point to interesting commercial possibilities. Rare earths—lanthanum, cerium, samarium and neodymium—are being used more and more.
Their importance in ceramics is growing. They are also in demand for the manufacture of engines that can withstand far higher temperatures than those made of metal. Tiles covering US space shuttles are ceramic.
The biggest demand is in the refining of petroleum. About one-third of the total rare earth produced is used In the industry in the form of mixtures, of which the largest proportion Is lanthanum oxide.
After long delay the proceedings of the Kingston conference have been made avail
। able by Dr Arun S. Wagh. of the materials laboratory of the University of the Wert Indies. Mona campus in Jamaica. He contributed a paper on Jamaica's rare earths tn which he pointed out that they were once used as trace elements and today are used in bulk.
Permanent magnets are replacing electro magnets and the strength of these modern magnets Is some 40 times that of the steel magnets tn use at the beginning of the century.
I The modem ones are made of : neodymlum-boron lron
In his paper Dr Wagh compared 1986 prices of six rare earths, all found tn Jamaican red mud. with 197® prices. That of neodymium was seven and-a-half times the 1979 price, that of lanthanum 16 1/2 times, samarium 35 times, and cerium 43 times.
The biggest producer of rare earths is the US. followed by Australia. China and India. The US is also the biggest user