Niobium Is Important. Can We Crack The Mystery Of Where It Forms?

Niobium is a metal is found in items from phones to high-quality lenses — now a Colombian scientist is hoping to solve the mystery of where and how it forms.

This metal is highly sought after but Brazil accounts for about 90% of global niobium production and 95% of known reserves, with annual exports of $2.25 billion.

Felipe Velasquez Ruiz, a geological researcher at the Universidad de Chile explains that his research aims to understand how niobium is transported on a geological scale and how it is deposited in the Earth’s crust, which is key to knowing where to look for it now.

“My latest work on critical metals was on Niobium, an anti-corrosive metal that is used in high-strength steels, as well as in superconducting magnets, magnetic resonance equipment, and experimental thermonuclear fusion work,” he says, “My research passion lies in unraveling the formation mechanisms of critical minerals for the energy transition, linked to magmatic-hydrothermal systems.”

In a 2022 study, Velasquez and his team found a solid evidence that the niobium available at one of the largest desposits in the world, in Brazil, originated 90 million years ago, 80 kilometers deep, in the subcontinental lithospheric mantle.

A subsequent study found niobium mineral there has magma-enriched origins and not water-enriched one, which is a key difference for the exploration industry because the magma-enriched bodies are confined to small geographical areas, compared to water-enriched ones.

“This information is important for geologists dedicated to exploration, because the discovery of magmatic niobium minerals could help to reduce and limit the search areas, which can lead to savings in prospecting campaigns,” Velasquez says.

In a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Geochemical Exploration, Velasquez and his team found that niobium stays in an igneous form, while the rocks surrounding the deposit changed to be higher in potassium and carbon dioxide.

Velasquez explains that mineral exploration (including collect samples, validating data and analysis) is a long term process of at least 10 to 15 years.

“The results of my work could be useful for exploration mining companies to search for niobium in the immediate future and at least in the next 10 years,” he says, adding that for commercial reasons, it is hard to know which companies are doing new exploration projects for niobium.

Growing up Colombia

Velasquez was born in La Estrella, just south Medellin, Colombia nearby to Reserva el Romeral —a natural area rich in forests, animals, and a large outcrop of rocks of volcanic origin over the Quebrada Grande basin.

“There, I was always familiar from a young age with the contact of volcanic rocks, and it is there where the passion for the study of rocks and geology in general was born,” he says.

Velasquez explains that the science developed in the Global South is fundamental for world development from various perspectives.

“For example, only in South America, in terms of diversity (biotic and abiotic), countries like Colombia and Brazil (among others) are considered mega-diverse countries,” he says, “The latter leads us to think that it is essential that native scientists, who are more familiar with their environment, are leading researchers.”

Velasquez explains that this does not mean that it is not necessary to create ties with other countries in the north.

“I consider that to achieve this leadership from our countries in this part of the southern hemisphere, a tripartite combination between government, academia and industry may be the key to development in STEM in the Global South,” he says.

Studying Space Dust

Another Colombian with a passion for minerals and their origins is Camilo Jaramillo-Correa, now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton Universitym who got to hold dust brought from outer space in a container he built.

The Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa2 mission became the first to beam images from operating rovers on an asteroid, left the asteroid Ryugu in 2018 and returned geological samples to Earth on 5 December 2020.

Jaramillo-Correa explains that at that time, he was studying his PhD in Nuclear Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, researching space-weathering: the altering of the surface of objects like asteroids when they are subject to solar wind (stream of particles coming from the sun) and micrometeoroids (dust particles flying at high speed).

“As part of my work, I designed and built a sealed sample capsule to hold samples while protecting them from air contamination for my experiments,” he says, “One day, some of my mentors asked me if I thought it was possible to use the capsule to study extraterrestrial material.”

Jaramillo-Correa soon found out that his mentors wanted to use his capsule to perform analysis on some of the asteroid dust samples that had been returned to Earth.

“With much excitement, I had to conduct several modifications and tests to the capsule to ensure we could comply with the strict requirements to protect the samples,” he says, “They had never been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere, and we had to keep it that way.