Next month, the Dominican government, with the help of the United States Department of State, will resume the investigations to determine the marketable existence of rare earths in the province of Pedernalesspecifically in the area of Ávila and the Las Mercedes hill.
Rare earths are a set of seven mineral elements of difficult extractionare never together and a complex and costly process is required to extract the 17 chemical elements from the subsoil, but their importance is becoming more vital every day in the technological, medical, weapons, energy and many other uses.
They will investigate
In a diploma course on Mining, the director of Mining, Rolando Muñoz, presented important details about the sector in the countryincluding a mining map, legal aspects and the existence of “anomalies”, which does not mean that there is enough for its exploitation and commercialization.
Next month, Muñoz revealed, a mission will go to the province of Pedernales to begin develop activities for rare earth research in the areas of Ávila and Las Mercedesbecause that has not yet been quantified.
In mining jargon, an anomaly is a technique that allows the recognition of unusual behavior, and determine outliers or predict results. A private source revealed that the Ministry of Energy will announce the day of the visit to Pedernales.
Decree 430-18, “Ávila Mining Fiscal Reserve”, states verbatim that “The existence of rare earths in the province of Pedernales was confirmed by sampling carried out by a mission managed by the World Bank in 2015.”
¿What are the rare lands?
The elements that make up the rare earths are scandium, yttrium and 15 others from the group of lanthanides, such as lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, eurocopium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetians.
What is it for?
It is used in mobile phones and computers, hybrid cars, weapons and medical equipment, and in renewable energy such as wind turbines.