The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Perpetua receives two DOD grants to study military-grade antimony from Stibnite, ID Geopolitical tensions with China and Russia's war with Ukraine has the Pentagon concerned about securing domestic supplies of antimony, a metal-like element that is critical to military hardware and emerging renewable energy storage technologies. To investigate the potential of securing this supply from an Idaho antimony mine that was attributed to saving 1 million American soldiers during...
Enormous 140-metric-ton autonomous Cat trucks loaded with lithium-boron ore will be driving themselves around on the very first day of operations at ioneer Ltd.'s Rhyolite Ridge project in Nevada. Slated to begin operations in 2024, the Rhyolite Ridge Mine is expected to produce an average of 20,600 metric tons of lithium carbonate and 174,400 metric tons of boric acid annually for 26 years. Electric vehicle batteries are driving unprecedented demand for the lithium to be...
RapidSX team on pace to begin commissioning REE separation plant this year Despite snarled supply chains, Ucore Rare Metals Inc. says it remains on track to begin commissioning a plant in Canada that will demonstrate the commercial viability of its RapidSX separation technology to automakers and others that are seeking an efficient and sustainable means of producing the rare earths needed for electric vehicles, renewable energy, high-tech devices, and household goods. A suite...
Sheep Creek rare earths project in Montana hosts 13 US critical metals With the transition to electric vehicles charged with low-carbon energy shining a spotlight on America's need for secure and reliable supplies of critical minerals, the Sheep Creek project in southwestern Montana has emerged as a potential high-grade domestic source of nine rare earths and four other metals that have been deemed critical to the United States. High-grade rare earths were found at Sheep...
US invests heavily into developing domestic rare earth element processing plants Despite what their name suggests, rare earths are not all that scarce. An efficient and environmentally sound technology capable of separating this tightly bonded group into the 15 individual elements of innovation, however, is truly unique and the key to establishing a rare earths supply chain in North America. There are currently no commercial-scale rare earths separation facilities in North...
Tellurium, a rare byproduct of mining copper and gold, may be the secret ingredient to longer-lasting lithium batteries that allow electric vehicles to travel more than twice as far on a single charge. With the support of industrial partner Fenix Advanced Materials, researchers at the University of British Columbia Okanagan are developing solid-state lithium-tellurium batteries that could deliver such advantages to EVs. Earlier this year, a UBC Okanagan research team...
Australian tech company brings satellite printing in-house Fleet Space Technologies has taken another large step on its path to leveraging the unique abilities of metal 3D printers to manufacture a constellation of 288 low-Earth-orbit satellites that can deliver secure planet-wide coverage for millions of industrial internet of things devices. This new phase for the Australian satellite technologies company is the installation of a new 3D Systems DMP Flex 350 metal 3D...
From flashlights to supercomputers, tin is the glue for an electronic age Lost in the clamor for lithium, nickel and other metals needed for the batteries powering electric vehicles and modern electronics, or the rare earth elements that turn stored energy into motion, is the enormous need for a much more modest metal that is so fundamental to the advancement of technology that it almost goes unseen – tin. While other technology metals are critical to certain products and s...
Autonomous Cat mining trucks surpass 5 billion metric ton mark Accelerating at an accelerating rate, Caterpillar Inc.'s mighty mining trucks have now autonomously hauled 5 billion metric tons of material at mines around the globe. This self-driving milestone comes just nine months after the "Yellow Iron" manufacturer reported that its trucks equipped with Cat MineStar Command for hauling surpassed the 4-billion-metric-ton mark. Currently, more than 550 mining trucks are...
Rio Tino to supply low-carbon metals, Volvo offers low-emissions trucks Global mining giant Rio Tinto and European automaker Volvo Group have agreed to forge a partnership that will help both companies achieve their climate ambitions. "We look forward to partnering with Volvo to progress our contribution to a net-zero future, as we collaborate to deliver sustainable outcomes from the mine to the showroom floor," said Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm. Under a...
Lack of domestic critical mineral supplies weakens US clean energy ambitions The White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are becoming increasingly aware that a lack of secure supplies of critical minerals and metals may be the kryptonite that weakens America's economy, national security, and clean energy ambitions. "The more we dive into this topic of critical minerals, the more I'm certain Superman isn't the only one who can be brought to his knees by rare minerals,"...
Replacing this oft-maligned lithium-ion battery metal comes at a cost Traditionally a headline-grabbing metal due to the perceived human rights and monetary costs it adds to lithium-ion batteries and the electric vehicles they power, cobalt is being overshadowed by the enormous demand and price increases for the lithium and nickel that also go into the storage cells that deliver the "E" to the EV revolution. Cobalt, however, continues to be a vital ingredient that improves...
Tesla and other automakers clamor for nickel suppliers with low CO2 footprint Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 2020 appeal to "please mine more nickel" served as a rallying cry for mining companies with projects positioned to deliver this critical battery metal into global markets. Going into 2022, however, the electric vehicle trailblazer's words were echoing in nearly empty warehouses as the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs are demanding more nickel than global miners can supply....
General Motors, Stellantis, and Tesla moving further up battery supply chain With the batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution demanding more lithium than miners can produce, the price of this lightest metal in the universe rocketed more than 1,000% over the span of two years. This has prompted automakers such as Tesla and General Motors to become more directly involved in the mining and refining of the lithium-ion battery namesake. "Price of lithium has gone to...
Develops strategy to be the world's critical minerals supplier of choice Understanding that the renewable energy and electric vehicle revolution offers a "generational opportunity for Canada and its world-class mining sector," Ottawa is leveraging the nation's wealth of critical minerals to become a powerhouse that feeds raw materials into resource-hungry clean energy and technology supply chains. "Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy will position Canada as the global supplier...
Rare earth elements suffer from a crisis of identity. Often referred to and treated as one commodity, REEs are actually a group of 15 elements – each with its own individual and seemingly magical qualities. "There are literally hundreds of uses for rare earths – they are unique materials, almost alchemistical magic," said Michael Silver, CEO of American Elements, a Los Angeles-based distributor of rare earths and thousands of other advanced materials. The almost mystical pro...
Manganese-rich battery cathode recipes could stretch the other ingredients While not as talked about as other battery ingredients such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel, manganese is an important stabilizing ingredient in the cathodes of the nickel-manganese-cobalt lithium-ion batteries widely used in electric vehicles and electronics. "Their composition helps determine how long you can talk on the phone, how far you can drive an electric car, how fast a battery can recharge and...
FTP Solutions and Rajant team up to deliver reliable autonomous mine network solution Rajant Corp., a global leader in industrial-grade broadband communications technology, has teamed up with FTP Solutions, a provider of market-leading wireless network monitoring systems, to deliver the extremely reliable and robust communications networks required for efficient and effective autonomous mining operations. Rajant's patented Kinetic Mesh technology offers mine sites with the...
Coming together to build North America's clean energy and e-mobility future The shift away from the fossil fuels that powered the Industrial Revolution and transported humankind through the 20th century, and toward the clean energy technologies that will propel us into the future, has the world at an inflection point – the decisions we make on how to supply, use, and recycle the minerals and metals that are the basic building blocks of the Renewable Energy Revolution will s...
Electric Vehicles require six times the minerals than their fossil fuel forebearers With even the most basic models boasting sophisticated driver-assist, navigation, infotainment, diagnostics, and other advanced digital systems being fed power from oversized versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in your laptop or smartphone, electric vehicles are becoming personal computers that you can drive. While this puts a whole new spin on the term mobile computing, riding around i...
Supply, demand, and risks to the US supply chain define criticality Metaphorically speaking, critical minerals are not set in stone. Instead, the criticality of these basic building blocks of modern society shifts with the demands for any given mineral, the ability of the mining sector to keep pace with that demand, and the geopolitics of where that supply comes from. "Mineral criticality is not static, but changes over time," said Steven Fortier, director of the National...
Magnet rare earths transform motion to energy; and energy to motion and music While all 15 of the rare earths have special properties that have been called magical, alchemistical, and futuristic, seven of these elements are imbued with a powerful magnetism that is hard to resist when it comes to creating a high-tech future powered by clean energy. The magnetic qualities of these rare earths – praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and holmium – are...
By 2030, batteries will likely need more than 5x all the graphite mined in 2021 While shortages of the lithium and nickel needed for electric vehicle batteries has dominated news headlines over the past year, the massive demand for graphite has largely been overlooked. As the primary ingredient in the anode side of lithium-ion batteries, graphite is the single largest element in lithium-ion batteries and the mining sector's inability to keep pace with skyrocketing demand of...
Rare metalloid key element of CdTe thin-film solar cell tech The rising popularity of thin-film solar cells as a highly effective means of converting sunlight into electricity is creating increased demand for tellurium, amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table. Tellurium is a metalloid, one of seven elements with properties that fall between metals like aluminum and tin and non-metals like carbon and phosphorus. These semimetals, which also include...
Russia and China's control of global supplies worry DC lawmakers From its uses in flame retardants that have saved countless American lives to being an important ingredient in batteries poised to be the answer to the challenge of storing intermittent renewable energy, few metals are more critical to the national security and economic wellbeing of the United States than antimony. Described as a metalloid, which means it falls somewhere between metals such as zinc and solid...
