Meaning of Bayan Obo | Babel Free

Definitions

A mining district of Baotou, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, in northern China.

Examples

“Bayan Obo is 146 km by road north of Baotou (population 1.5 million), where the ores are concentrated and smelted. The climate of Bayan Obo is extremely dry.[...]About 40,000 people live at Bayan Obo, most of whom work either directly in mining or in support activites.”

“In 1992, during his visit to Bayan Obo, China’s largest rare earth mine, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared, “There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China.””

“Wearing the worn and dusty clothes of an unskilled laborer, he looked like most of the inhabitants of Bayan Obo, a company town in Inner Mongolia that was itself worn and dusty.”

“On orders from Beijing, state-controlled enterprises have dismantled Baotou refineries and rebuilt them at an enormous mining complex at Bayan Obo in the Gobi Desert, which mines about half the world’s rare earths.”

“All rocks around us contain significant amounts of rare earth elements, but they become concentrated in these exotic magmas through slow crystallisation in Earth’s crust. This is usually not enough to make an ore deposit, which consists of millions of tonnes of rock made up of between 5 and 50% by weight of rare earth elements. A second step of concentration is required. In giant deposits such as Bayan Obo in Inner Mongolia, hot fluids loaded with carbonate appear to have undergone this extra concentration step. But exactly how has been a mystery.”

CEFR level