Goodbye, beloved laptop...

[mareserinitatis]

If you thought the oil crisis was an issue, take a gander at this:

As it happens, we are building a lot of flat-screen TV sets and computer monitors these days. Gallium is thought to make up 0.0015 percent of the Earth’s crust and there are no concentrated supplies of it. We get it by extracting it from zinc or aluminum ore or by smelting the dust

Comments

[yami_mcmoots]

I like how the article lists "synthesizing elements" in the same paragraph as "recycling". Alchemy is totally making a comeback!

[mareserinitatis]

:-)

I imagine you can synthesize some elements - he mentioned in the article that astatine and francium have only been created in laboratory settings. However, if you create elements through nuclear engineering, I'm going to guess that a) you can't make much at a time and b) it's going to be FREAKIN' EXPENSIVE. I think the idea of mining asteriods is a lot cheaper.

My hubby was commenting that Jerry Pournelle talked about how you could do that by pushing one into LEO and then using a parabolic mirror, also in LEO, to smelt it. The only problem is breaking it down and getting it to the surface so that you get enough to make it worth it without creating a danger to people.

[zedmanauk]

It seems to me that it may be much easier to mine trash dumps for these elements than it was to find the elements in the first place. For example, the article states that hafnium is extracted in minute quantities from zirconium (which itself is extracted out of zircon, which is mined) through an extremely complicated process that would take 3 or pages to explain. It seems like it would be no more difficult to find old computer chips in dumps and extract the hafnium from them. And already, governments (including California) have made it illegal to throw away most electronics, which instead have to go through recyclers, which makes the process of collecting these materials easier

[mareserinitatis]

I got the impression that astatine and francium don't even show up naturally because of their short half-lives. (i.e. if they did show up, they weren't around long enough for us to know about it.)

I agree that recycling would be better, but I also know that CA is far ahead of the curve for recycling compared to a lot of places. There are no such restrictions on throwing away electronics in a lot of places (at least not in the tri-state area here)...and part of that is due to the fact that there aren't any electronics recycling facilities anywhere around. (Once a year, the city sponsors an electronics recycling day, but it's completely voluntary and not well promoted.)

I also don't know about how to extract minerals once they've been used to dope chips or incorporated into electronics in general. I'm thinking it's going to be more complicated than even extracting them from minerals. I could be wrong...but I'm guessing that it's a completely different beast, and until now, no one has seen a reason to develop the technology to do