5.1 Supply

The Periodic Table is the iconic depiction of all the known chemical elements, organised by atomic number. It is one of the iconic images most of us remember from our school days, perhaps even being taught weird mnemonics to help us remember at least a fair chunk of it.

But Figure 5.2 shows a somewhat different version of the Periodic Table. In this case the area occupied by each element represents its abundance: the greater the area, the more common the element is. Importantly it also highlights those natural elements that are being overused and are running out.

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Figure 7 A form of the Periodic Table showing those elements in plentiful supply and those under serious threat of running out

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The figure illustrates a form of the Periodic Table showing elements in plentiful supply and those under serious threat of running out, depicting 90 natural elements. The top of the figure has the following text: ‘The 90 natural elements that make up everything. How much is there? Is that enough? Is it sustainable?’

The elements are arranged in a table and are grouped under the following categories:

Elements in plentiful supply: H, Be, C, N, O, F, Ne, Na, Al, Si, S, Cl, Ar, K, Ca, Ti, Fe, Br, Kr, Rb, I, Xe, Cs, Ba, La, Pr, Sm, Gd, Eu, Tb, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Yb, Lu, Po, At, Rn, Fr, Ra, Ac, Pa, and Th.

Elements with a limited availability, future risk to supply: Li, Mg, B, P, Sc, V, Mn, Ni, Cu, Se, Zr, Nb, Mo, Sn, Sb, Nd, W, Au, Hg, Tl, Pb, and Bi.

Elements with serious threat in the next 100 years: C, He, Sr, Y, Zn, ga, Ge, As, Ag, In, Te, Hf, and Ta.

Elements with rising threat from increased use: Cr, Co, Dy, Ru, Rh, Pd, Cd, Os, Ir, Pt, and U.

Synthetic: none.

Elements from conflict resources: C, Sn, Ta, W, and Au.

Elements used in a smartphone: H, C, O, Li, Mg, Al, Si, P, K, Co, Ni, Cu, Ga, As, Br, Y, La, Pr, Nd, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ag, In, Sn, Sb, Ta, W, and Au.

Figure 7 A form of the Periodic Table showing those elements in plentiful supply and those under serious threat of running out

Activity 4 Sustainability and The Periodic Table

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

You can find out more about the way the elements are represented in Figure XX and in the two videos below, including the drive to recycle elements in low abundance.

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Transcript: Video 5 The Periodic Table and sustainability (part 1)

DAVID COLE-HAMILTON

Everything in this whole world is made from just 90 building blocks, the 90 natural elements. That’s an amazing thought. Put together in different ways, they give all the different beauty and diversity of the world. If we didn’t have them, or if we lost some of them, we couldn’t have the same diversity and beauty that we have at the moment.

The area occupied by each element represents its abundance in the Earth’s crust and in the atmosphere. Some are large. Some are small.

It’s on a logarithmic scale, because otherwise you wouldn’t see the ones at the bottom. And even then, we’ve had to expand some of them. You see lots of oxygen, rather little of some of the others.

The colours represent what we’re doing to the element. So if we have a phone and we put it away somewhere, the elements in that phone are lost. And if we go on doing that, then we disperse the element, and it’s not available.

So what we’re saying is that the ones that are red will not be available in less than 100 years, and sometimes much less, as we’ll see in a minute. The ones that are orange, there’s an increasing use of them. And so we’re having to produce more, and there may become a danger that we run out of them. And yellow, there is some worry that in the longer term we will have a problem of supply of them.

Now you’ll also see that there are five elements which have a black symbol on them, or grey symbol. And these are elements that can come from areas where wars are fought over the mines that they come from, or the proceeds of the mining are used to fund wars, mainly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now they don’t only come from there, but it means that if you have something that’s come from there in your pocket, in your phone, for example, then somebody died to give it to you. So we have to try to make sure we don’t use those elements from those things.

There are three elements, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which have a deep red colour to them. This is that we’re worried about the fact that we’re overusing them. I mentioned nitrogen already in eutrophication. Carbon, we overuse, causing global warming. And phosphorus is very similar to nitrogen.

And then you’ll see there are 31 elements on which there’s a mobile phone signal. Now that represents the 31 elements in most mobile phones. Some have more. Some have less. But they’re the normal ones.

And you’ll see that all four of the elements that can come from conflict minerals, which are tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold, are in mobile phones. And six of the other elements, which are red, are also in mobile phones. So we have to think about that. And mobile phones are very, very important.

Now I want to refer to this periodic table in the rest of the lecture, but I don’t want to do it by flicking it back up and down. So I thought I would show it to you in a slightly different way. And I have a copy of it, which I’ll show you here. I hope you’ll be able to see it and then I won’t have to flick up and down to the pictures. Here we are.

I want to talk about mobile phones because everybody has one, and they are potentially a really difficult problem. They are the ultimate in use and discard technology in the linear economy. 1.5 million phones every month are exchanged in the UK. Every month, think about that, 18 million a year, 150 million in Europe and in the United States, extraordinarily large numbers of phones.

So I want to talk about two elements, specifically. Indium, which is here, red, and tantalum, which is here, black and red. And the reason I want to talk about them is because they cause a serious problem. Indium is a byproduct of zinc mining. And there is only enough if we continue to do what we’re doing for 20 years.

Now indium is used in every touchscreen. Indium tin oxide is the conductive material that allows the touchscreen to work. Without it, we cannot have a mobile phone in the way we have it at the moment. The second one is tantalum, which is both red and black. That means it’s not going to last very long, and it also can come from conflict minerals.

What mobile phone companies do is they use a thing called traceability, where they look at the tantalum they’re getting to put into the phone, they trace it back through all the processing steps it’s gone through to the mine it came from and make sure it didn’t come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Usually it comes from Canada.

Tantalum is used as a micro capacitor, stopping surges of current in your phone and protecting your main processor. So it stops you frying your chips, if you like. But it’s really very, very important. And we have to have that.

And think about what you do with your mobile phone when you get that phone call saying you’re due an upgrade, come and get a new phone. Well, most people would stick the phone in the drawer. And I would imagine if I asked any one of you who’s watching this, whether you’ve got a phone in the drawer, at least half of you would have, or that’s what the Royal Society of Chemistry found in a survey that they did.

If you don’t put it in your drawer, and you hand it in back to the phone company, very often it goes to the developing world where it can be reused, which is good. But then after it’s been reused, the absolutely appalling situation happens where children in the street sit with pools of acid trying to extract the gold while the carcasses of the phones build up by the side of the road. It’s absolutely shocking.

And this is a major environmental problem. It’s a major social problem. And it’s a major problem for supply of these elements.

And the other thing about them, of course, is phones are not readily mended if something goes wrong. The mobile phones build in redundancy. And so this is a problem. If you have a phone, usually you have to have a special screwdriver to undo it. You have special glues.

Now I have a Fairphone here. And Fairphones are actually modular. So you can take bits out and put them in very easily. And you can do it yourself. And this is very important, very good.

So I recommend the Fairphone. And I don’t get any money from them for saying that, by the way. So modular phones are good.

But when you know all this about phones, can you really justify having a new phone every two years? Do you need it? You don’t really need it. You’ve got a perfectly good phone that’s working fine. And if the battery goes down, you can hope to replace it. And indeed, we’ll talk about that again in a minute.

So what we really need is a circular economy for phones. We need to reduce the amount of phones we use. And we can do this by extending the lifetime of them that we keep them. So keep it for five years instead of two years. That really cuts the problem by more than half.

If it goes wrong, have it repaired. If you don’t want it anymore, then give it to somebody else. Don’t just chuck it away or put it in a drawer. Give it to, I don’t know, a grandparent or a child who wants it.

And I’ve put here at the bottom replace. But I don’t mean replace the phone. I mean we as chemists have to replace the materials in the phone so that we use earth abundant elements.

And there’s a lot of work going on this to find equivalent materials which will do what indium tin oxide does, for example, but using earth abundant elements. And a few examples are antimony, stannate, and calcium molybdate. None of them are as good as indium tin oxide.

And indium tin oxide has to have certain very important properties. It has to stick to glass, it has to be conducting, and it has to be transparent. So there’s an enormous challenge there to develop new materials for making phones.

There is good news because the European Commission and the UK have brought in a right to repair. This means mobile phone companies now are not allowed to do what they were doing before. They have to make phones which can be repaired, either by you or at a corner shop. So very good news that, and this will make things much easier, and make it much easier for you to keep your phone by putting in a new battery.

End transcript: Video 5 The Periodic Table and sustainability (part 1)

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Transcript: Video 6 The Periodic Table and sustainability (part 2)

DAVID COLE-HAMILTON

I now want to talk about helium, which is up here. Now, helium is a really interesting element. Its main use is in cooling the magnets for MRI imaging. Some of you will have had an MRI scan, and there’s a picture of somebody going into an MRI scanner.

The magnets have to be at very low temperature, 4 degrees Kelvin. And the only thing that will take them down to that temperature is liquid helium, which boils at 4 degrees Kelvin. So it’s very important to have it.

It’s also used in other uses. One of them is in deep-sea diving to prevent people getting the bends. If you dive with air, deep sea, nitrogen dissolves in your blood. When you come up, it comes out as bubbles. It can give you gas embolism, which can affect your brain, your heart, and you can die from it. It’s very unpleasant.

But helium doesn’t dissolve in the body. It’s inert. It doesn’t do any harm. So you place some of the nitrogen with helium, and you can then dive deep down.

Now, the important thing about helium is it’s very, very light. It’s the second-lightest element we have. And it’s also very, very stable. If it gets into the atmosphere, it goes up and up and up and up because it’s light till it gets to the edge of the atmosphere, and then it’s knocked into outer space and lost forever.

So if you release helium into the air, that’s it, gone. You see, it’s red here. There’s a shortage of supply of helium. Now, in these cases, the helium is, in fact, recycled. So here’s somebody wearing a helium recycling apparatus for diving, and here’s a recycler for MRI scanners.

Now, what about the supply of helium?

The main suppliers are Qatar, which did shut for a long time but is reopening it is supplying a bit now; the USA, which is running down its reserves; Russia and they’ve had enormous problems because of explosions in the plants they have there; and then Tanzania, where there’s a fairly new find, a large field, that will not open until 2025.

And even then, if you use all the helium in the Tanzanian field and use it once and let it go, then it would only be enough to last for about 8 to 12 years so really quite a small amount.

The one thing that we do where we don’t recycle helium is party balloons. Now, party balloons go down. They either pop or they go down because the helium diffuses out. And that helium always then goes into the atmosphere, goes through this process of going up to the top, and being kicked out into outer space. When you know this, can you really justify having helium celebration balloons when this precious resource will be lost forever?

Now, I got in contact with the European Balloon Council, and they sent me their fact sheet. This is it, Balloon Gas. And they told me, there’s not a problem with helium. We know exactly what’s happening, and it’s fine.

And in this report, they say that only a tiny amount of helium is used in party balloons. And then they tell you how much it is. It’s 10% in the UK.

Now, I did do a programme for a Russian television channel which is not controlled by Vladimir Putin. And in Russia, apparently, 47% of helium is used in party balloons. That’s not a tiny amount.

They then say it’s dirty helium, it can’t be recycled, and it’s not useful. Reliquefying it is not economical.

But then, when you look at exactly what that means, in order for the helium balloon to float, it has to be 95% helium. The Tanzanian field only has less than 10% helium, and they say they can’t refine 95% when people are going to refine 10%. So this is nonsense. And I’ve upset them a great deal, these balloon people, by telling them this.

So if you think of the Tanzanian field, I said, there’s enough here if we just use it once for everything. But only 10% is used in balloons. So in 8 years, that will all be gone. And then you won’t be able to have an MRI scan.

So would you prefer to have helium party balloons, or would you like your child or grandchild to be able to have an MRI scan? It’s a no-brainer. We really shouldn’t use helium party balloons.

Now, again, there is some good news. Gibraltar used to have a national day every year where they release red and white balloons. They’re the colour of Gibraltar. And they were helium balloons, and they’re now banned. And they were banned partly because of the loss of helium, and partly because of what happens to them is they go into the sea, the sea mammals eat them, and the sea mammals die. And it’s very tragic.

And the balloon people will say, no, no, no, it’s fine. The plastic we use for the balloons is biodegradable. Well, the plastic takes a year to biodegrade. It takes about 10 seconds for a sea mammal or a calf or something to eat a helium balloon. So, really, it’s a very serious problem.

And then, in London, in Hyde Park, they had a winter festival. And you’ll notice that they said, we have banned helium balloons. And we’re making progress.

So what about recycling? We’ve been talking about recycling, and here we are. This is the same periodic table, the original one, now coloured in a different way. And pink means that less than 5% is recycled up to blue, which means that more than 50% is recycled.

And you’ll see the elements that I’ve been talking about. Indium is not recycled at all. Tantalum is not recycled at all. And helium, of course, is recycled. But we have this problem of it actually leaving the atmosphere, the only element we lose from the atmosphere.

End transcript: Video 6 The Periodic Table and sustainability (part 2)

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Video 6 The Periodic Table and sustainability (part 2)

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So you have seen that many ‘at-risk’ elements are found in consumer electronics, such as mobile phones and computers.

Technologies are being developed that can be utilised for the recovery of metals from electronic devices and electronic waste (e-waste) – this is part of so-called urban mining, where valuable materials are recovered from urban waste of various types . 

Best known for the manufacture of UK coins, the Royal Mint based in Llantrisant, South Wales is carrying out ‘urban mining’, using innovative chemical processes to recover precious metals. Working in partnership with an international clean technology partner, it is using room-temperature chemistry to leach gold from printed electronic circuit boards. This gold is precipitated out and formed into ingots that can be used in a range of products – another example of a circular economy.

This work is described in the following video.

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Transcript: Video 7 Extracting gold from e-waste

[ON SCREEN: Anne Jessopp, Chief Executive, The Royal Mint]

ANNE JESSOPP

So the Royal Mint is the original maker, one of the oldest manufacturing organisations in the world, with 1,100 years of history. People will know us for making coins, but we do a lot more than that. So today, I’m really delighted to announce a partnership with a Canadian company, Excir, and we’re actually working in partnership with them on some really exciting, sustainable technology, which takes waste electronics and takes out the precious metals and actually recycles that.

[ON SCREEN: Sean Millard, Chief Growth Officer, The Royal Mint]

SEAN MILLARD

Electronic waste, at the moment, is one of the world’s global problems. If we’re going to put this in context, there’s 50 million tonnes of this stuff that is created every year, and it’s growing very quickly. At the moment, what happens to those printed circuit boards is they all get collected and then shipped to other countries. So 99% of the printed circuit boards go outside this country and go to places to either be burnt or, unfortunately, in some cases, into landfill. So this technology provides a significant solution to the problem of e-waste.

We’re also being able to transform those printed circuit boards not only by extracting the precious metals from them, but also converting the byproducts of that into something useful. So a complete circular economy.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 7 Extracting gold from e-waste

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Video 7 Extracting gold from e-waste

Best known for the manufacture of UK coins, the Royal Mint based in Llantrisant, South Wales is carrying out ‘urban mining’, using innovative chemical processes to recover precious metals. Working in partnership with an international clean technology partner, it is using room-temperature chemistry to leach gold from printed electronic circuit boards. This gold is precipitated out and formed into ingots that can be used in a range of products – another example of a circular economy.