Static material flow analysis of neodymium in China

Abstract Neodymium is one of the most important enabling materials for next‐generation clean technologies, especially electric vehicles and wind turbines. As the world's largest producer of rare earth minerals, China dominates the global neodymium supply and a considerable amount of primary neodymium resources are from illegal mining. Many studies have been conducted on the material flow of neodymium in different regions, but few studies focus on China. In this study, a static material flow analysis of neodymium is conducted to quantitatively analyze the industrial chain structure of neodymium in China and to calculate the neodymium output from illegal mining. The results quantitatively depict the neodymium material flow of each stage of China's neodymium industrial chain in 2016, which indicates that 12.3–17.0 kt of primary neodymium resources were from illegal mining. On the basis of the results, reasonable conclusions can be drawn that the recycling of neodymium from end‐of‐life products provides an important opportunity to both reduce illegal rare earth mining and cope with increasing neodymium demand.