Rare earths, the idea of ​​a group of Italian teachers:«We don't need new deposits, let's replace them with more sustainable materials»

With the help of an algorithm, the Rara Foundation hopes to find new alternative materials

They have been defined as the "elephant in the room" of the ecological transition and in recent years they have become one of the most sought-after assets in the world.It's about the critical raw materials, i.e. all those metals and other materials that are considered fundamental for making the transition to a more sustainable economy.But which at the same time – for geological, historical and political reasons – are today distributed very unequally on the planet.Among these materials there are also rare earths, a group of 17 elements of the periodic table with the most disparate uses:electric cars, fiber optics, wind turbines.Access to rare earths, as well as to the rest of critical materials, mainly faces two problems.First:China controls the vast majority of global distribution.Second:the extraction of rare earths is a polluting and very expensive process.How do you get out of it?A possible solution could come from the Rara Ets Foundation, a non-profit founded by some professors from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.The idea does not envisage either entering into agreements with foreign countries or seeking new deposits on European soil.Rather, create new composite materials - made up of more abundant elements and distributed throughout the planet - which can have the same properties as rare earths.

The illusion of the deposit in Sweden

Earlier this year, Sweden announced that it had discovered the largest and most promising rare earth deposit in Europe.The problem is that it is located in sacred territory for the Sami, an indigenous population of the Scandinavian countries.In 2007, the UN and the European Union criticized the Swedish government for its failure to respect the rights of the Sami.Therefore, it appears "very unlikely" that the opening of a mine on that same land could be easily accepted by the local population.The Italian government has also launched a study to map the subsoil and discover any deposits of critical materials.Today, however, it is difficult to have a clear idea of ​​the potential of our country and the possible environmental impacts of the opening of new mines.And it is precisely from here that the idea of ​​the Rara Ets Foundation began, whose founders were invited to the Foreign Affairs Commission for an informal hearing on 11 July.They are Stefano Bonetti, professor of Physics of Matter at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Guido Caldarelli, professor of Theoretical Physics, Michele Bugliesi, professor of Computer Science, Alberto Baban, president of the investment company VeNetWork.Their proposal starts from a very simple consideration:“There is no clean way to extract rare earths, which means that processes to avoid pollution require expensive remediation processes,” they explained during the hearing.Their proposal is to venture down a path that so far no one has yet decided to explore:«try many combinations of materials, test them and find those similar» to rare earths.

The algorithm for «sustainable materials»

At the foreign affairs commission, the professors of the Veneto university explained that the number of possible combinations of materials is almost infinite.For this reason, the Rara Foundation has developed an algorithm "capable of optimizing the search for these materials, in a much more efficient way than what has been done up to now, creating a map of the materials".The algorithm has been tested on a database of 45 thousand materials and, the founders of the non-profit have announced, is about to be patented.The goal is to create increasingly precise databases, until we are able to identify composite materials capable of replacing rare earths.At the moment this is still an embryonic idea.To speed up the process - and try to achieve some results in good time - the Rara Foundation launches a clear appeal to the government:negotiate with the Brussels leaders so that «the European Commission reserves funds aimed at replacing critical materials with sustainable materials».

Photo credits:Wikimedia Commons | A rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California