The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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U.S. Department of Energy is funding a Critical Materials Supply Chain Research Facility support a resilient and secure domestic supply chain. The Department of Energy is funding a Critical Materials Supply Chain Research Facility that will help support a secure domestic supply of minerals and materials critical to economic prosperity, national security, and the green energy transition in the U.S. This week, the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM)...
Materials breakthrough improves the timeline of plasma stability, brings endless energy closer. This month in France, a donut-shaped fusion reactor the size of an eight-foot box called WEST has upgraded from a carbon interior to one made of tungsten, an improvement which successfully contained plasma hotter and longer than ever. Compared to this latest result, our own sun burns at temperatures 30% less while still powering grid-scale systems running on solar panels whose...
Pentagon awards $20 million to jump-start the production of battery-grade manganese at South32's Hermosa project in Arizona. The Department of Defense (DOD) has announced a $20 million grant awarded via the Defense Production Act Investment (DPAI) Program to South32, a globally diversified mining and metals company, for accelerating the upcoming Hermosa zinc-manganese project in Arizona. Located in a historic mining district in the Patagonia Mountains, Hermosa was chosen for...
Climeworks has started operations at the world's largest direct air carbon capture plant in Iceland; stashing CO2 in Louisiana's salt aquifers is next. Over in Iceland two massive direct air capture (DAC) plants priced in the low triple-digit millions to build are costing close to $1,000 per metric ton to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But that's only the beginning – they will build even bigger next time. Climeworks' carbon capture technology is coming to America. E...
International Battery Metals and US Magnesium agree to install world's first modular DLE plant. This May, International Battery Metals (IBAT) and US Magnesium announced their partnership to install a first-of-its-kind modular direct lithium extraction (DLE) plant that can rapidly be deployed to a site and efficiently extract lithium from a variety of brine resources. The portable, modular design provides both a smaller footprint and scalability. The mobile facility is...
Latest budget's resource search focuses on battery metals and rare earth elements. Over the coming decade, Australia is prepared to spend A$566 million (US$373 million) to map out deposits of minerals critical to high-tech manufacturing and the green energy transition. "The critical minerals space is one of the reasons why there is so much attention from global and domestic investors, but we need to make sure we can attract and deploy that," Australia Treasurer Jim Chalmers...
Without investors, the future of South Africa's rare earth elements enriched Phalaborwa site may depend on Washington support. Bordering South Africa's renowned Kruger National Park stands Phalaborwa, a mine sporting two rare earths-enriched phospho-gypsum waste piles that could mean over a billion in critical minerals for the U.S. – if the project can get enough support to run. To challenge China's near monopoly on rare earths, Washington has committed funds to a little-known...
Boron 2D material may surpass graphene in improving a variety of next-gen technologies. Graphene has been this decade's star of materials development, lending itself to everything from cancer detection to stronger concrete. But a new and improved two-dimensional material is making its presence known in the world of nanomaterials – borophene. First synthesized in 2015, borophene is the nano-thin 2D version of boron that is more conductive, lighter, stronger, and more f...
Thermal energy storage cavern twice the size of Madison Square Garden could heat Finland's fourth-most-populous city of Vantaa all year. Engineering advancements have recently made strides in sustainability by imitating nature as opposed to conquering it. In the case of storage, the global energy transition demands more powerful and efficient batteries as well as earth-friendly processes to get the technology where it needs to be, and one city in Finland is building the...
New nanofiber electrode material increases energy storage. The next generation of wearable and flexible devices will necessitate the development of more robust, lightweight energy storage systems and researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have answered the call – developing modified carbon nanotube fibers in an electrode-like material that can offer 3.3 times the strength and 1.3 times the conductivity over regular carbon nanotubes. Technology c...
A cheaper and more sustainable LiDFOB electrolyte reduces lithium salts while maintaining battery performance. An international research team has developed an electrolyte with a very low concentration of lithium salt for a cheaper, safer alternative to conventional lithium batteries. According to the report, battery cells using these LiDFOB – lithium difluoro (oxalato) borate – electrolytes in batteries with standard electrodes have demonstrated outstanding performance, pro...
Findings reveal high concentrations of lithium in pyrite. The golden glitter of a faceted nugget of pyrite has earned it the moniker "fool's gold" for its abundance, showy false promise and low value as a common sulfide – until recently. Lithium, on the other hand, has been the modern day's elusive "white gold" prize in many searches, from hard rock mines to brines and more experimental sources such as mine tailings and drill cuttings. Recent research led by a team from W...
Trucks send seismic waves beneath cities to explore the terrain for oil, gas, faults and geothermal. In 2017, two fleets of massive trucks crossed from Long Beach into Orange County in southern California, sending literal shock waves through the streets. And now, in Germany, they're going to be at it again. The vehicle used to create these vibrations is a seismic vibrator truck or thumper. These trucks use a large weight to thump the ground's surface while sophisticated...
Despite rising EV sales, miners are unable to finance projects for battery metals. Amidst a green tech boom, fierce global competition is pushing down company margins, and a surprising number of mining industry leaders, like Albemarle, First Quantum Minerals, Glencore, and BHP, are cutting budgets, lowering dividends, and laying off workers. In the U.S., where the Biden administration is pushing to develop a domestic mineral supply but has halted many projects that would meet...
New capacitors are layered with 2D and 3D materials whose architecture promises higher energy and unprecedented efficiency. A group of researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, have developed a new metamaterial designed to advance the capabilities of ferroelectric capacitors, a discovery that could open the door for the widespread adoption of this elusive electrical storage solution across many technologies....
Car and battery manufacturers are getting in on the critical minerals mining business. There has been an increasing trend of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for electric vehicles, and the batteries that power them are moving upstream in the global metals supply chain to secure deals for their own feedstocks of critical minerals – entering into mineral offtake agreements directly with mining companies, investing in mining projects, and joint mining ventures. Until r...
An efficient e-waste recycling process is made possible by whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking. Scientists in Switzerland have recovered high-purity gold through a scalable process using food scrap-derived sponges that efficiently adsorb the precious metal from tricky e-waste. The final result is 450 milligrams of 22-carat gold recovered from 20 discarded motherboards. Because the method utilizes industry byproducts, it is doubly sustainable and cost-effective as well. Gold...
The Metals Company and SGS have produced nickel from harvested polymetallic nodules. As part of The Metals Company's (TMC) pilot-scale processing, the world's first nickel sulfate has been produced from polymetallic nodules harvested from the seabed, further solidifying the resource's promise for battery markets. "The production of the world's first nickel sulfate from deep-seafloor nodules is an important milestone, confirming that our custom flowsheet configuration can be de...
You won't find many miners on TIME and Statista's inaugural list of 250 companies reducing environmental impact, but one green mining tech company has arrived. Sailing in alongside several hydrogen producers as one of America's top green-tech companies of 2024, deep-sea mining firm Impossible Metals is one of the rare few resource-related organizations to be granted the honor. This year, TIME launched its inaugural list of America's Top GreenTech Companies from an intensive...
Korean researchers present a high-power sodium-ion battery that can be charged in seconds. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a high-energy and high-power hybrid sodium-ion battery capable of charging within seconds. Interest in developing batteries based on sodium has taken off due to concerns over the sustainability of lithium, as well as safety concerns due to the combustibility of lithium-ion batteries....
Cheap and safe, water-based organic redox flow batteries are coming – an interview with Quino Energy's founder Eugene Beh. Quino Energy CEO and co-founder Eugene Beh is a chemist and physicist with an impressive history of accolades from Harvard to Stanford and back again and deep expertise in electrochemical systems, be it a postdoctoral fellowship working on aqueous organic flow batteries at Harvard University or inventing and commercializing a redox flow desalination t...
New material bridges anti-gravity tech and super-sensitive instruments. Flying cars and personal jetpacks notwithstanding, a new carbon-based material is bringing us closer to stable levitation technologies with no need for mechanical or electrical assists. Today's levitation uses electrically manipulated magnetic fields, superconductors or diamagnetic (magnetically repelled) materials to float above magnets. The primary use for this is in developing super-sensitive...
Inlyte Energy's endeavors to bring back sodium-metal-halide batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are today's most common energy storage technology, with uses large and small, ranging from smartphones and other electronic devices to electric cars and stationary. But science is far from resting on this standard – battery efficiency and durability are still in high demand. With sodium easier to source and exponentially cheaper than lithium, a redesigned sodium-metal-halide battery m...
Japan's Kajima Corp. is well on its way to supplying the world with carbon-negative concrete. A little over an hour from Tokyo, nestled in the mountains near Nagano, a house has been built in Karuizawa with the world's first carbon dioxide-removing concrete walls produced by replacing a percentage of the cement content with an industrial byproduct and adding a CO2-absorbing admixture of dicalcium silicate. Karuizawa is one of Japan's oldest and most famous forested mountain re...
Dods’ “Vital but Vulnerable: UK Critical Minerals Policy” report cautions that more needs to be done. Dods Political Intelligence, an advisory service, has published a report to provide context and evaluation of current critical mineral policies in the United Kingdom. These are increasingly crucial for contemporary defense manufacturing, which acts as a deterrent against conflict. Meanwhile, global economies in a rush to transition to green industries are going to colle...
