Picked up at the 2016 GSA convention. As befits a Springer product, pricey but full of interesting stuff. The rare earths are elements in row IIIB of the periodic table: scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides (but not the actinides). As author J.H.L. Voncken points out, they are not “earths” nor are they particularly rare; all are more abundant than (for example) mercury and antimony. They are, however, difficult to separate from ores and from each other; this last is because of the peculiarities of the 4f orbital, which is more complicated than I can easily explain here, plus I’m not sure I understand it well enough to explain it anyway (and Voncken doesn’t really explain it either). Voncken goes over the history of rare earths (four, yttrium, ytterbium, erbium, and terbium are named after the small town of Ytterby in Sweden, which thus holds the major league record for Town with Most Chemical Elements Named After It, with six others tied for second place and kudos to you if you can name them); describes the major ore minerals - the most important is monazite (I must confess appalling geological ignorance here; for years I have been confusing monzonite (which is a pretty common intrusive igneous rock) with monazite (which is a rare earth phosphate and the most important rare earth ore mineral); to complicate matters, every now and then rare earth deposits are associated with monzonite intrusions) and discusses rare earth mineral deposits (although there are exploitable deposits in California, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Sweden, Russia, South Africa, Greenland, Australia and Vietnam, China has 80% of the known REE reserves and produces 95% of the worlds REEs). Voncken hints at but doesn’t state directly that China has been manipulating production to eliminate competition – i.e., stepping up production and lowering prices every time another entity tries to develop a deposit elsewhere. As mentioned, REE production from ore is pretty difficult; the current most effective method is solvent extraction; the ore is processed by various means until the REEs are present as hydroxides; then these are run through a bi-phase liquid, with one phase aqueous and the other an organic solvent (Voncken doesn’t say what this is, except to note that it is very viscous and thus must be diluted with another solvent). The REEs concentrate in the organic phase; Voncken doesn’t say why.

Prior to the electronics revolution, REEs were mostly a chemical curiosity; a little cerium was used in lighter “flints” and as a polishing compound (as cerium oxide); the others had some small application as dopants in optical glass; until 1965 or so global production was under 10K tonnes. However, things took off when the rare earth magnet alloys (neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-cobalt) were discovered; following that were lanthanum-nickel hydride batteries (helped out by the EU banning cadmium in batteries) and various REEs in phosphors for electronic device displays. There are various other minor uses; global production – 95% Chinese – is now around 135K tonnes. There have been some attempts to recycle REE from used electronic equipment; however, the electronics recycling industry is also dominated by China.

The author is Dutch; no translator is credited, Now and then there’s a sentence which is grammatically correct but not quite idiomatic English, but there’s nothing that interferes with understanding. Extensive illustrations, always clear and useful. References at the end of each chapter, mixed between older technical literature and Web sites. All in all a useful work. ( )