Mining for substances such as gold and coal has been big business for hundreds of years. But as technology develops, we need an increasing number of other materials to power new industries in our changing world. Read on as we look at some of the most popular elements, metals, minerals, and more being mined in the 21st century – and how the Russian attack on Ukraine has sent shockwaves throughout the sector.
Lithium is needed for a range of day-to-day products, from batteries and aluminium to glass. This chemical element can either be mined from petaline or castorite rocks, or extracted from underground brine reservoirs in countries such as Argentina and Chile. Unfortunately, both methods of extraction have a heavy environmental footprint. Mining one tonne of lithium can require up to 500,000 gallons of water, so many companies are trying to extract the element from geothermal waters instead.
Lithium has a wide variety of commercial uses. Fireworks, ceramics, cosmetics, and even the device you're reading this on right now all contain the element – and its usage is set to skyrocket. That's because lithium is a vital component of electric car batteries. As carmakers move towards producing electric vehicles, demand for lithium will increase dramatically. Even with the environmental impact of lithium mining, most people believe that electric cars are more eco-friendly than traditional combustion engine cars. But with reports linking lithium mining to slave labour, we can't ignore the potential human cost of this growing industry.
And concerns over the impact of this element could be growing. According to the Houston Chronicle, both Democrats and Republicans are opposing lithium mining in the US for a variety of ethical reasons, despite predictions from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the world's lithium production will need to increase by 40% to help us reach net zero targets. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has suggested he could launch his own lithium mining company to combat the "insane levels" that lithium prices have reached, as sourcing the vital material becomes increasingly problematic.
Silicon is a hugely useful element that is commonly mined as silica sand, also known as silicon dioxide, before going through a complicated refining process. It's used to make alloys such as aluminium-silicon and ferro-silicon, both of which can be found in engine parts and machine tools. China currently produces more than half of the world's silicon, producing 5.4 million tonnes in 2020, while Russia – the second largest producer – made just 540,000 tonnes.
Not to be confused with the synthetic polymer silicone, silicon is used in the manufacture of ceramics, bricks, and certain cements. Because it's a semiconductor, it can also be used in transistors. But its most common usage is within computer chips and solar cells, hence the nickname 'Silicon Valley' for San Francisco's tech hub.
Like many industries, the global silicon sector has been badly affected by the Russian war in Ukraine. As countries around the world have hit Russia with sanctions, the price of ferro-silicon has skyrocketed, with some reports claiming the element increased by 20% between February and the end of March this year. Trade sanctions have left other countries such as India and Malaysia to plug the gap left by the suspension of Russian exports, worsening the ongoing chip shortage.
Like gold, platinum is commonly found alloyed with other metals such as iron or copper. It can be commercially produced as a by-product of copper and nickel mining, or mined from sand and gravel beds underground. Platinum mining involves packing explosives into deep holes to break rock into smaller pieces. Miners then transport these pieces to the surface, where any platinum ore can be extracted for processing. The majority of platinum mining occurs in South Africa. According to South Africa's mineral council, the first platinum was discovered there in 1924. Today, the country is responsible for over 75% of the world's output of platinum.
Thanks to its lustrous appearance and low reactivity, platinum has a wide range of uses from jewellery to fuel cells. It can be used in pacemakers, combustion engines, and even some types of cancer treatment. The industrial uses of platinum make it an interesting precious metal for investors. Given its ability to withstand high temperatures, there are very few other metals or synthetic materials that can replace it. But due to its rarity (platinum is 30 times rarer than gold), it's one of the most volatile metals in modern investment portfolios.
To make matters worse, the demand for platinum has rarely been higher. According to a report by Bloomberg, automakers around the world are starting to substitute platinum for palladium, a component used in catalysts. Both Russia and Ukraine are key producers of palladium so many manufacturers are turning to alternatives as disruption to the global supply chain continues. Predictions from the World Platinum Investment Council suggest that up to 400,000 extra ounces of the precious metal could be needed to cover the shortfall, causing the platinum surplus to drop by almost 50% by the end of this year.
Helium is obtained from natural gas, which is mined by drilling wells deep into the earth's crust. The gas, which must contain at least 0.3% helium to be considered a viable source, is then separated into its components, allowing miners to isolate elements such as nitrogen, hydrogen sulphide, and helium. This process is known as scrubbing. Almost 80% of helium mining occurs in the US, specifically Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. The remaining 20% is focused in the Middle East, Russia, and North Africa.
When you think about helium, you probably picture birthday balloons. But this element is mined extensively for a variety of reasons. Thanks to its low boiling point of -268.93°C (-452.07°F), it can be used in liquid form to keep MRI scanners cool during use. Helium is also used to fuel space shuttles and, back on earth, to scan supermarket barcodes! However, as the world's resources of natural gas run lower, data from British Petroleum suggests we could have just 52.8 years-worth left. And prices are rising as a result.
In the US, for example, the price of helium has more than doubled from $280 million (£224m) per million cubic feet in 2019 to around $600 million (£479m). That's according to the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS), which cites reserve closures and tensions with Russia for the increasing cost.
Salt mines exist all over the world from Pakistan to Canada and China to Chile. Early salt miners had a dangerous job, often becoming severely dehydrated due to salt particles in the air. Although modern salt mining is far from risk-free, it's considered a lot safer than other practices such as coal mining. Salt is typically mined through deep-shaft mining, which involves sinking shafts into underground seabeds and hauling the crushed salt to the surface via conveyor belt. Another option is to create a well over a salt bed and inject water to make brine. The brine is boiled and evaporated, leaving salt that can be dried, refined, and sold.
The Wieliczka salt mine in Poland is one of the largest in the world. Although it was closed for industrial purposes in 2007, it's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site that attracts around 1.2 million tourists every year. As well as its huge saline lake, the mine houses a spectacular underground chapel that was built for miners to use during the working day. It was originally excavated in the 13th century and produced table salt continuously for around 700 years. Other uses for salt include softening water, making glass and rubber, and de-icing surfaces.
Copper is a soft metal with a distinctive red-orange colour. Copper mining is usually conducted through open-pit mining. Large sections of the earth's surface are extracted by drilling holes into the hard rock to break into smaller pieces for ore extraction processing. Huge copper mines exist in the US, South America, Spain and several African countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. Chile is currently the world's largest copper producer, with Peru coming in second. Chile is home to six of the world's largest copper mines and produced around 5.6 million tonnes of the metal in 2021.
The properties of copper make it well-suited for various purposes. Thanks to copper's ability to conduct heat and electricity, it's a popular material for wires, engines, plumbing, and industrial machinery. It can also be added to precious metals to help improve their hardness, so is often combined with gold to make jewellery. In the construction industry, it's a valuable material for cladding, roofing, and lightening rods.
As well as being beautiful, diamonds can make excellent investments because their rarity means they retain value. These precious stones can be mined via natural erosion, as well as through pipe and marine mining. Pipe mining involves digging into the earth's surface and removing layers of sand to find diamonds buried in the ground. Marine mining is the process of sourcing diamonds from the ocean floor. Both processes cause serious problems, from destroying sea life and exploiting enslaved people to sparking civil war. The term 'blood diamond' or 'conflict diamond' is used to describe stones that have been mined in troubled areas and traded to fund further violence.
While diamonds can be found in smaller artisan mining efforts, there is still a huge production line behind many of the diamonds that are mined around the world. Russia is currently the world's biggest producer of the precious stones, with Botswana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo coming in second and third respectively. Diamonds have their obvious uses in the jewellery industry, particularly for making engagement rings, but can also be used in cutting and polishing tools as they're one of the hardest natural materials.
Despite not being that well known, manganese is actually one of the most abundant metals on the planet. Manganese ores are extracted from open pits and then sent for processing through the smelting of ores in a blast or electric furnace. Manganese is mainly found in South Africa, which is currently thought to hold the majority of the world's manganese resources. However, manganese mines can also be found in Australia, China, and India. There are also smaller mines in Brazil and Gabon, which reportedly derives around 60% of its revenue from oil and manganese ore.
Manganese is a very important ore mineral and is required to make both iron and steel, two of the most frequently used metals across the world. It can also be used to make dry cell batteries, decolourise glass, and even as a brown pigment in certain paints. Although the price of manganese has been relatively volatile in recent years, its continued use makes it a potentially interesting investment opportunity for commodity investors.
Cassiterite is a mineral that's mainly found in Bolivia, although there are also an increasing number of mines in Rwanda. Typically black, red, or yellow in appearance, cassiterite is mainly mined through gravel pumping and dredging. Gravel pumping involves using water jets to break up the ground before transporting the resulting gravel to a treatment plant, where ores and minerals can be removed. Dreding is the process of excavating material from a sea or riverbed.
As tin can be extracted from cassiterite ores, this material has many common uses. Tin is a popular metal because it's resistant to rust, making it ideal for the manufacture of plates and containers. It can also be mixed with other metals to make alloys such as bronze, which is made by combining tin with copper. Additional uses for tin include soldering and making car parts. In its native form, cassiterite has fewer uses, but is becoming increasingly popular in the jewellery industry thanks to its striking colours.
Cobalt, a metal with a blue-grey hue, is mined on both an industrial and artisanal level. Artisanal cobalt mining largely takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where small mines are dug out to access mineral-rich rocks just a few metres below ground level. Cobalt is then taken from the mined rocks through a smelting process, which involves heating the ore to extract cobalt and other minerals.
One of the earliest uses for cobalt was as a blue pigment for jewellery and paint, with records dating from around 1450 BC. Although cobalt is still used as a dye today, it's more commonly found in the production of lithium-ion batteries, a usage that's likely to increase as electric cars become more popular – and smartphones more accessible – around the world. It can also be used to create hardwearing metal alloys. Like lithium mining, however, cobalt mining has been linked to human rights violations including child labour, slavery, and corruption. This is particularly problematic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nickel is mined by extracting it from ores such as laterite and pentlandite, which consists of nickel and iron. It's mainly extracted through the use of flash or electric smelting, a process that involves putting the ores into a furnace with pre-heated oxygen. This sparks an oxidation reaction that enables miners to separate the ores into their components. Mining the ores, however, can cause a great deal of pollution, partly in the form of acid mine drainage. Indonesia and the Philippines are two of the world's biggest nickel producers, followed by Russia – which produces around 14 times as much nickel as the US – and New Caledonia.
Despite its environmental impacts, nickel mining is still big business. In 2021, 2.7 million tonnes of the metal were produced around the world, according to preliminary figures from the US Geological Survey. Nickel is typically made into alloys for use in batteries, medical equipment, mobile phones, power generation, and jewellery. One of its most important alloys is stainless steel, which includes nickel, chromium, copper, silicon, and aluminium, among other elements.
Cryptocurrencies burst on to the scene in 2009, when Bitcoin was created by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. There are now more than 6,000 cryptocurrencies available and, although the number continues to rise, Bitcoin has remained the most popular with the highest valuation. Unlike the commodities we've mentioned, digital assets are mined through computers. While this doesn't require human labour, it can require vast amounts of energy. The annual energy consumption of Bitcoin, for example, is about the same as the whole of Sweden.
The past few years have been volatile for the crypto market, which has fluctuated by billions of dollars. Among other factors, analysts have attributed this price variation to Elon Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla. Despite being a vocal supporter of crypto for years, Musk made a brief U-turn when the media revealed how much energy Bitcoin mines need to run in late 2021. Many cryptocurrencies crashed on the back of Tesla's decision to stop accepting Bitcoin payments – but not all. Assets such as Ether and Ada maintained their value because they rely on a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. This technology is much less energy-intensive than Bitcoin's proof-of-work (PoW) protocol, as miners don't need to carry out computational equations.
So which countries are driving the cryptocurrency revolution? Kazakhstan is the world's second-largest miner of cryptocurrency, thanks in part to an enormous mine consisting of 50,000 computers that stands in the desert outside Ekibastuz. China has historically been the most prolific cryptocurrency miner. In 2021, five of the biggest Bitcoin mining pools were all based in the People's Republic, but when crypto transactions were banned in the nation last year, its mining rate slowed significantly, sparking a phenomenon now known as "the great mining migration." This saw Bitcoin miners leave China in their droves, relocating to more crypto-friendly locations such as Texas.
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