Rare earth metals are hunted together with their alloys because they are used for many tools in everyday life, including: computer memory, DVD, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, motor vehicle catalyst converters, magnets, fluorescent lamps and others. Even the use of computers and DVDs has grown faster than that of cell phones. Various types of rechargeable batteries, which contain a lot of cadmium (Cd) or lead (Pb), are now being replaced by rechargeable lanthanum-nickel-hydride (La-Ni-H) batteries. Likewise, computer batteries, car batteries and communication equipment use a lot of rare earth metals because they have a longer lifespan, are easy to recharge and are easy to recycle.
The use of rare earth metals varies widely, namely in nuclear energy, chemistry, catalysts, electronics, metal alloys and optics. Utilization of rare earth metals for simple things such as lamps, glass coatings, for high technologies such as phosphors, lasers, magnets, batteries.
The use of these rare earth metals triggers the development of new materials. New materials using rare earth metals provide significant technological developments in materials science. The development of this material is widely applied in industry to improve product quality. For example, what happens to magnets. Rare earth metals are able to produce neomagnets, which are magnets that have a better magnetic field than ordinary magnets. This allows the emergence of technological developments in the form of reducing the weight and volume of existing speakers, allowing the emergence of a more powerful dynamo so that it can move the car.
With the presence of rare earth metals, allowing the emergence of electric-powered cars that can be used for long trips, therefore hybrid cars are starting to be widely developed. In the development of hybrid cars, rare earth commodities become very strategic. For example, metal groups Nd, Pr, Dy and Tb are important materials in the manufacture of electric motors and hybrid car generators, while metal groups La, Nd and Ce are important materials in the manufacture of NiMH hybrid car batteries.
In the metallurgical industry, the addition of rare earth metals is also used for the manufacture of High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steels, high carbon steels, superalloys, and stainless steels. This is because rare earth metals have properties that can increase the ability of the material in the form of strength, hardness and increased resistance to heat. For example, by adding rare earth metals in the form of additives or alloys to magnesium and aluminum alloys, the strength and hardness of these alloys will increase.
Rare earth metals can also be used for catalysts as activators, mixtures of chlorides such as lanthanium, while neodymium and praseodymium are used for oil purification catalysts with concentrations between 1% and 5%. This LTJ chloride mixture is added to the zeolite catalyst to increase the efficiency of converting crude oil into products resulting from oil processing. It is estimated that the use of LTJ for catalysts in the petroleum industry will increase even more in the future.
Other uses of rare earth metals include automatic gas lighters, security lights in mining, jewelry, paint, and glue. For nuclear installations, rare earth metals are used on nuclear detectors, and nuclear control rods. Yttrium can be used as colored ceramic material, oxygen sensor, rust and heat protective coating.
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