{"id":5509,"date":"2015-04-15T16:44:03","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T15:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5509"},"modified":"2015-04-15T16:44:03","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T15:44:03","slug":"materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5509","title":{"rendered":"Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When people think about resource limitations they rarely think about materials.\u00a0 However, not everyone has ignored this issue.\u00a0 A few years ago my parent&#8217;s church was plagued by thefts of lead from its roof.\u00a0 After several such raids the churches insurer&#8217;s were getting jumpy and threats of premiums going up were made.\u00a0 The church came up with a solution.\u00a0 That was pay a Venture Scout to sit up the church tower with a mobile phone.\u00a0 He didn&#8217;t have to long to wait.\u00a0 One night dozens of police turned up with dogs and caught the thief.\u00a0 Now they have made a series of security measures that don&#8217;t involve venture scouts.\u00a0 Church roofs were a real problem for thefts, but not the only one relating to materials.\u00a0 Thefts of copper were also a huge problem from railway lines meaning a huge number of passenger delays.<\/p>\n<p>Since then the problem has eased in the UK for two reasons firstly metal prices have fallen and second the government has made it illegal to sell metals without proof of ownership.\u00a0 Nevertheless a number of issues related to materials do still present themselves and were covered in an article in New Scientist (14th Feb 2015). These are;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The energy used to extract them.<\/li>\n<li>The damage made doing so.<\/li>\n<li>Where they come from.<\/li>\n<li>How much of them is left and the ore strength.<\/li>\n<li>How much they can and are recycled.<\/li>\n<li>substituablity (will something else do for a particular use).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The table below gives some uses for some materials.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr style=\"background-color: #dedede;\">\n<td>Material<\/td>\n<td>Use<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Copper<\/td>\n<td>wiring<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Platinum<\/td>\n<td>Catalytic converters\/catalysts\/anti-cancer drugs<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Indium<\/td>\n<td>Touchscreens\/solar PV<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Cobalt<\/td>\n<td>batteries\/machine tools<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Neodymium<\/td>\n<td>magnets in electric cars and wind turbines<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Silver<\/td>\n<td>solar PV<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\u00a0Gallium<\/td>\n<td>mobile phones<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\u00a0Germanium<\/td>\n<td>Camera lenses<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Looking at energy of extraction and processing materials vary greatly.\u00a0 The picture of the periodic table below gives two examples for copper and ruthenium with their recycling rates.\u00a0 Looking at the energy cost, the figures are vastly different.\u00a0 But this is of course not the whole story.\u00a0 The amount of copper mined is much greater than that of ruthenium.\u00a0 Therefore the amount of energy required for copper production is vast (1).\u00a0 As we covered in our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookdepository.com\/No-Oil-Lamp-Andy-Mellen\/9780232529449\" target=\"_blank\">book<\/a> it could mean as ore strength falls the quantity of energy used for copper extraction alone could be 30% of all the energy used in the future.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Periodic-Table_opt.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-5521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Periodic-Table_opt-300x188.jpg\" alt=\"Periodic Table_opt\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Periodic-Table_opt-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Periodic-Table_opt.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One apparently simple solution is to recycle.\u00a0 With something like copper, recycling is easy.\u00a0 Its used in large quantities and we can generally see it as copper pipes or something tangible.\u00a0 Recycling for lead copper, zinc and aluminium are all above 50%.\u00a0 In the case of mobile phones (vast numbers of which are disposed of every year) you would be barely able to see the &#8220;rare earths&#8221; used and these are therefore very difficult to recycle.\u00a0 Recycling rates for these are below 1%.<\/p>\n<p>How much of these materials are left is another hotly disputed question.\u00a0 Rare earth reserves are said in this article to be worrying, but platinum OK.\u00a0 There has however been research done on collecting the tiny amounts of platinum excreted by catalytic converters in vehicles that end up on the street using bacteria.\u00a0 This suggests stocks are not so good.<\/p>\n<p>Substituting one material for another is theoretically possible.\u00a0 Its easier with mainstream materials such as lead or copper, but less easy with some of the rare materials.\u00a0 Surprisingly these hi-tech industries can be conservative though.\u00a0 A doctoral student at my university was doing research into using brass as the\u00a0aerial in mobile phones rather than tungsten, tantalum and cobalt.\u00a0 She said it works and would avoid the ethical dilemmas associated with materials from conflict zones.\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge no phone uses this technology.<\/p>\n<p>I have only covered a few of the issues in the area of materials.\u00a0 I would encourage you send your phone or other electronic devices for recycling (despite what I wrote above) as well as other materials.\u00a0 There is in any case a contamination problem if these devices end up in landfill.\u00a0 If you buy a new one why not consider the worlds only fairly traded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fairphone.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">electronic device<\/a>.\u00a0 Also <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.gregvalerio.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Greg Valerio<\/a> has set up a fair trade scheme for gold (as jewellery).\u00a0 Both try to avoid using materials from conflict zones.\u00a0 We need to substitute as far as possible with simple recyclable materials and build recycling in.<\/p>\n<p>1) Nuss P, Eckelman MJ (2014) Life Cycle Assessment of Metals: A Scientific Synthesis. PLoS ONE 9(7): e101298. doi:10.1371\/journal.pone.0101298<\/p>\n<p>Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When people think about resource limitations they rarely think about materials.\u00a0 However, not everyone has ignored this issue.\u00a0 A few years ago my parent&#8217;s church was plagued by thefts of lead from its roof.\u00a0 After several such raids the churches &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5509\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,28,32,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-other","category-recycling","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - 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