Development of a rare earth element resource database management system

The future availability of Rare Earth Elements (REE) is a very important issue in the 21st century due to a rapid growth in demand Moreover, inequality between supply and demand has led to monopolistic supply conditions controlled by China. This resulted in severe challenges for REE consuming companies and competing REE producers outside China. These circumstances had boosted exploration activities for REE prospects worldwide over the past years. Currently, there are several information sources on REE prospects scattered in scientific literature, company reports, and feasibility studies. However, there is no source accessible which contains all relevant data on REE occurrences and deposits. REE are progressively gaining an essential part within new technologies, such as clean energy, military, and consumer electronics sectors. With each of these sectors incessantly expanding, industrial demand for the constituent REE is rising rapidly, hence their inclusion in the group of strategic elements. An acute problem for strategic elements is the concentration of the world's largest producers in a small number of countries. However, the supply problems are partly based on complex ores, separation issues, and the safe handling of hazardous elements. Further, it depends on the high market volatility and increasing demand. Therefore, the evaluation of REE deposits has become very crucial for sustaining the security of future supply. To analyse future supply options, it is important to point out the difference between producing deposits, a prospective deposit and a simple occurrence.This dissertation analyses current REE prospects concerning geological, mineralogical, economical, mining and environment-technical attributes by creating a DBMS. Another part of this dissertation is the analysis of Critical REE (CREE) and its market structure. These features are essential for analysing the REE sector and its prospects. Moreover, they also help to validate the necessity for developing the DBMS.The main part of developing the DBMS is based on information databases, which contain collective information on 1190 prospects with known REE enrichment. The data are, however, of differing accuracy and reliability, depending on the degree of exploration undertaken to date. Grade and tonnage information is available for about 250 deposits, while more detailed geologic and economic parameters such as material grade, defined resources (TREO tonnage) and reserves, CREE and Basket Price are known for 79 sites. In addition, the database also contains entries pertaining to the abundances of toxic elements such as thorium and uranium. The system includes an economic dataset of REE producing companies and potential producing companies. The evaluation systems implemented in the DBMS are Rating, Clustering, Ranking and Use-Value Analysis. However, all systems evaluate the existing producing deposits as well as the potential deposits for possible future production. Further, the DBMS provides the opportunity to analyse the complete dataset of all prospects by using the implemented rating system. This system includes all occurrences and deposits worldwide and rates them according to attributes of market and statuary mining codes. These attributes, are of high relevance with regard to the assessment of the REE sector. Thus, the evaluation system of Rating is a useful tool to analyse the complete REE sector concerning producing and potential prospects The evaluation system of Clustering is used to subdivide the REE sector by the ore-containing raw mineral, which is relevant for industrial separation and use. Thus, within the evaluation system Clustering, it is possible to constitute different Clustering Groups, namely Eudialyte, Bastnasite and Monazite.The third evaluation system is Ranking, which functions as a pre-evaluation system to the Use-Value Analysis. It is a calculation tool that computes TREO values combined with material grade values of single elements. As a result, it ranks the regarded prospects in TREO per oxide. In this dissertation, three different ranking systems are analysed. Most oxides are weighted equally. However, lanthanum, cerium and samarium are weighted regressively. This is a consequence of the high abundance and thus, lower prices for these oxides. The Use-Value Analysis is the main evaluation system in the DBMS. It evaluates deposits according to selected parameters of the categories Material Grade, Economy and Mining. These parameters include mineral contents, presence of toxic elements, TREO tonnage, Basket Price and production volume. Within the Use-Value Analysis, different case studies according to different views on the REE sector are presented within this dissertation. These case studies evaluate the REE sector concerning its economy, and environmental as well as mineralogical issues