The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Group 11 Technologies Inc. believes that GFG Resources Inc.'s Rattlesnake Hills project about 60 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming is the ideal place to prove the viability of its proprietary means of recovering gold from the earth without mining. This technique, known as in-situ recovery, is a non-invasive method that involves circulating fluids underground that dissolve the sought metals and then pumping the fluids back to the surface to extract the metals – reverse of the...
Roughly 200 times stronger than steel, highly conductive to electricity and heat, antibacterial, and only one atom thick, graphene is a wonder material that has captured the imagination of scientists. Now, researchers in Germany and Finland have created a new two-dimensional carbon material that offers new properties and possibilities. In recent years, graphene has been used to make materials lighter and stronger, batteries charge faster and last longer, and even as a coating...
Though originally developed to recover rare earths from recycled magnets and potential ore from its Montviel REE deposit in Quebec, Geomega Resources Inc.'s rare earths and critical minerals extraction technology may draw value from and reduce the environmental footprint of bauxite residues piling up at aluminum refineries. Innord, a subsidiary of Geomega focused on developing solutions to large industrial mine waste challenges with its technology to extract critical...
Adding an extra layer of tomato on a metaphoric BLT could be the solution to a decades-long problem that has prevented scientists from developing the solid-state lithium batteries that would significantly increase the range and lessen the charging time of electric vehicles. For roughly 40 years, researchers have tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, which hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time...
From $15 billion to bolster clean energy research to incentives aimed at encouraging Americans to buy electric vehicles, the Biden administration's proposed $174 billion investment in the United States EV industry is a once-in-a-generation strategy that is missing a key piece – a plan to secure the minerals needed to manufacture these vehicles and the batteries that go in them. In a new fact sheet that outlines its plan to supercharge U.S. transportation and manufacturing, t...
As a part of their commitment to lowering carbon emissions, many global mining companies would like to transform their large haul trucks from diesel to electric. This transition, however, has one big hurdle – the time it takes to charge up these enormous earthmovers takes away from productivity or requires mining operations to buy more of these multi-million dollar electric trucks to do the same work as their diesel counterparts. To find solutions to this dilemma, three of t...
A team of international researchers have developed a new mining technique that will advance humans beyond the Bronze Age when it comes to extracting copper, gold, silver, and other conductive metals out of buried bodies of ore. Since humans began using metals on an industrial scale some 5,500 years ago, we have depended on physically digging up the metal-bearing rocks from underground tunnels or quarries, crushing the ore, and then using various techniques such as heat or...
While it is still several years before any significant quantities of the Ultium batteries going into the next generation of General Motors electric vehicles will reach the end of their lifecycle, the automaker is already establishing lithium-ion battery recycling capabilities at its Ultium battery cell manufacturing mega-factory in Lordstown, Ohio. To establish this capacity, Ultium Cells LLC, a joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution, has entered into a multi-year con...
Policymakers must take swift and decisive action to ensure that the minerals critical to the global transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles are not the bottleneck that prevents governments from meeting their climate goals, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. "Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world's strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realizing those...
Mining companies, equipment manufacturers, engineering firms, tech companies, and universities have come together under a European Union-funded program aimed at developing new technologies, methods, and processes to increase the efficiency and sustainability of global mining operations. This three-year project known as Next-Generation Carbon-Neutral Pilots for Smart Intelligent Mining Systems, or NEXGEN SIMS, is building upon the successful sustainable mining operations...
Mining and quality assurance companies are increasingly embracing Chrysos Corp.'s PhotonAssay as a more accurate, faster, safer, and environmentally sound means of analyzing samples for gold, silver, and complementary elements. Hitting samples with high-energy X-rays, Chrysos PhotonAssay causes excitation of atomic nuclei allowing enhanced analysis of gold, silver, and complementary elements in as little as two minutes. This offers the ability to carry out assays at the mine...
Looking to transform old coal mining regions into new domestic sources for rare earths and critical minerals vital to electric vehicles, renewable energy, and other technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $19 million for 13 projects in traditionally fossil fuel-producing communities from Appalachia to Alaska. "The very same fossil fuel communities that have powered our nation for decades can be at the forefront of the clean energy economy by producing the...
Already positioned to be the first North American producer of the battery-grade cobalt being demanded by a rapidly growing electric vehicles market, First Cobalt Corp. has been awarded $600,000 in funding from the US Department of Energy's Critical Materials Institute for research on innovative techniques for recovering the cobalt and copper from its Iron Creek project in Idaho. Being matched equally by funds from First Cobalt, this $1.2 million interdisciplinary research...
Boston Dynamics' robot dog Spot has the agility, perseverance, and skills to be a miner's best friend by taking over the risky and mundane mining tasks. Spot is already carrying out patrolling duties at mines around the globe and the Colorado School of Mines recently unboxed its own robot dog. "We have never had a robot that is so agile, that is so well designed, that can do a lot of things just out of the box," said Hau Zhang, an associate professor in the Department of...
Seeking to bolster America's critical mineral supply chain, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has introduced legislation that tackles the notoriously long permitting process in the United States. "America's reliance on foreign countries for the production and recycling of our critical minerals is a vulnerability to our national security, a disadvantage to our economy, and a hindrance to our global competitiveness. Unfortunately, the current federal permitting and review process...
Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Congressman David McKinley, R- West Virginia, along with 12 other U.S. lawmakers, are urging the Biden administration to develop domestic metallurgical capabilities for the separation and processing of rare earth elements to end America's dependence on China for this critical supply chain. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the lawmakers wrote, "China's monopoly of the rare earth value chain is a significant...
With transportation accounting for roughly 30% of America's energy consumption and the largest contributor to the country's greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy is offering more than $162 million in funding to improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions for cars, trucks, and off-road vehicles. "Getting to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 means we must aggressively cut down the largest source of emissions: the transportation sector," said Secretary of Ene...
Seeing solid-state batteries as a game-changer for the automotive sector, BMW Group plans to have a prototype of this higher density electric storage technology ready for demonstration in less than four years and be commercially producing solid-state cells for use in its electric vehicles by 2030. "We are doing intensive research on solid-state battery technology," said Frank Weber, who heads BMW AG's development division. "By the end of the decade, we will be implementing an...
A pair of Texas congressmen, Republican Lance Gooden and Democrat Vicente Gonzalez have introduced the Reclaiming American Rare Earths Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at reducing America's dependence on China for rare earth elements and other minerals critical to the United States. The U.S. depends on foreign countries for more than 50% of its supply of 28 of the 35 minerals deemed critical to America's economic and national security, including 100% import-reliant for 14 of...
Answering the Biden administration's call for industry input on the risks to battery supply chains in the United States, American Battery Metals Corp. said accelerating lithium-ion battery recycling and next-generation extraction technologies is one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly ways to increase the supply of the battery-grade nickel, cobalt, lithium, and other materials needed for the transition to electric vehicles. "Unlike fossil fuels, elemental...
TechMet Ltd. continues to build strong financial support for its vision of building a portfolio of world-class projects that produce, process, and recycle technology metals critical to electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and energy storage. "TechMet's mission is to build ethical, independent, and environmentally sound supply chains for the metals that are needed to ensure the success of this 21st-century clean energy and EV revolution," said TechMet Chairman and CEO...
Recovering scandium from its iron-titanium mine in Quebec, tellurium from the Kennecott copper mine in Utah, and now lithium from its Boron mine in California, Rio Tinto is leveraging its operations to produce the critical metals needed for 3D printing, solar energy, and lithium batteries. On April 7, the global miner announced that it has begun producing battery-grade lithium from waste rock at its Boron mine site at the western edge of the Mojave Desert. The mine is...
Toward its mission to "produce the greenest advanced graphite materials with a carbon-neutral footprint for a sustainable world," Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc., has laid out a plan that not only charts a path to a carbon-neutral future but also aims to offset all corporate emissions since the company was formed in 2012. "Nouveau Monde has committed to a zero-harm approach to producing advanced battery materials for decades to come. Carbon neutrality is an important part of this...
First Solar Inc. is leveraging the power of Group 5 elements to nearly eliminate the degradation of its newest generation of photovoltaic solar panels. Group 5 refers to vanadium, niobium, tantalum, and dubnium that are in the fifth vertical row from the right on the periodic table. Only the first three are naturally occurring refractory metals – dubnium has been produced in laboratories but has only a short half-life. Scientists at First Solar's labs in Silicon Valley and Ohi...
The long-term exploration and colonization of Mars will not be able to rely on the expense of rocketing goods beyond the gravitational pull of Earth and then another 171 million miles to the Red Planet. Instead, the mining of ice and other minerals for fuel, water and building materials from local resources will need to be carried out by Martian robots and humans. So, it is no wonder that NASA's first three Mars rovers are basically robotic geologists exploring the Martian...
