McNulty Brian A, Jowitt Simon M
University of Nevada Las Vegas, Department of Geosciences, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4010, USA.
iScience. 2021 Jul 1;24(7):102809. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102809. eCollection 2021 Jul 23.
The critical minerals and elements are natural substances that are essential to modern life but have insecure supply. This lack of a secure supply clashes with the increasing importance of these elements, especially given their use in technologies needed to reduce global CO emissions and mitigate against anthropogenic climate change. In this contribution we review the by-product nature of the critical minerals and elements and the inherant uncertainties in reported critical mineral and element annual production as well as the relationships between these commodities and main-product metals and associated concentrates. We explore the geological and geographical barriers to critical mineral and element supplies, as well as how the lack of available data and the uncertainties in the data that are available hinder our ability to estimate global resources with confidence.
关键矿物和元素是现代生活所必需的天然物质，但供应不稳定。这种供应缺乏保障的情况与这些元素日益增长的重要性相冲突，特别是考虑到它们在减少全球碳排放和缓解人为气候变化所需技术中的应用。在本论文中，我们回顾了关键矿物和元素的副产品性质、报告的关键矿物和元素年产量中固有的不确定性，以及这些商品与主要产品金属及相关精矿之间的关系。我们探讨了关键矿物和元素供应的地质和地理障碍，以及可用数据的缺乏和现有数据的不确定性如何阻碍我们有信心地估计全球资源的能力。
