Discovery, location and abundance of rare earths

The similarity in properties of the rare earth elements in the -HII oxidation state, makes their separation very challenging, and therefore their isolation and discovery spanned approximately 150 years. In 1787, Arrhenius made the initial discovery of the black ore ytterbite (which was renamed gadohnite in 1800) 

In 1839, Mosander who was working with cerium nitrate found it was possible to separate a soluble salt from this material, which he termed lanthana. Three years later, he separated this lanthana into didymia and the pure lanthana. Didymia was found later to be an impme element and was to be a mixture of two oxides which were inseparable using his procedures. In 1842, Mosander continued working on the pmification process and separated ytteria ore into three oxides pure ytteria, terbia and erbia. The oxide that provided pink salts was named terbium, and the other that gave a yellow peroxide he called eibium. Delafontaine and Berlin also had identical results, but alternatively named them eibium and terbium, respectively, as today. At this time there were six known rare earth elements yttrium, cerium, lanthanum, didymium, eibium and teibium. 

1 One of the authors (PCJ) in Ytterby, Sweden, the site of the discovery of ytterbite and the town after which yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium are named. 

Despite their high relative abundance (Section 1.3.2), rare earth minerals are difficult to mine and extract (mainly because of their similar chemical properties), making the rare earth elements relatively expensive. Industrial use of rare earths was impractical economically imtil separation techniques such as ion exchange and liquid-liquid extraction were developed and optimized during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  

Although China is dominant in the production of separated rare earths (97%), it is not dominant in terms of rare earth deposits with extensive sources also in USA, India, Brazil, Malaysia, Africa and Australia. Australia has abimdant rare earths sources, and hence has the potential to be a major supplier. It was once a major exporter of monazite based on East Coast mineral sands, of which the tomist resort Fraser Island remains an imtouched example. In the 80s and early 90s, there were several attempts at major developments in Australia. WIM Minerals, a 

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