With the rapid development of civilization and technology, the need for minerals is increasing and diversifying. Minerals are needed by almost all types of industries such as the agriculture, food, telecommunications, transportation, chemical, housing and energy supply industries.
The latest trend in the development of environmentally friendly energy is using minerals as a source of energy (electric batteries) and energy conversion (solar cells, wind turbines, etc.), which require several types of minerals, one of which is the rare earth metal.
Rare earth metals and other minerals are non-renewable natural resources and are formed through a long geological process. In addition, rare earth resources, which are included in the world's critical minerals, are also vulnerable to being affected by global issues.
Rare earth metals are one of the strategic minerals and include "critical minerals" consisting of a collection of the elements scandium (Sc), lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), promethium (Pm). ), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), lutetium (Lu ) and yttrium (Y). These elements play a very important role in technology-based industrial development.
Exploration of rare earth metals in Indonesia has been carried out in various areas for various types of deposits such as in the Parmonangan (North Sumatra), Belitung, Ketapang areas. (West Kalimantan), Banggai (Central Sulawesi), West Papua for lateritic type and Bangka Belitung Islands, Riau Islands, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan for placer type deposits.
The term rare earth metals is based on the original assumption that the presence of these rare earth metals is not very common. But in fact the abundance of these rare earth metals exceeds other elements in the earth's crust. The presence of rare earth metals is generally found in a distribution that is not large and spreads in a limited way. Like thulium (Tm) and lutetium (Lu) are the two elements that are least abundant in the earth's crust but 200 times more abundant than gold (Au). However, these elements are very difficult to mine because their concentrations are not high enough to be mined economically. These seventeen metallic elements have many similar properties and are often found together in geological deposits.
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