The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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In addition to dealing a major blow to the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on a chink in the United States' economic and security armor – an overreliance on foreign countries for the minerals and metals that lie at the frontend of American supply chains. "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how delicate our supply chains are and that should be a wakeup call for all of us," Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said d...
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have devised a unique method to help curb the looming shortages of critical minerals and metals by making it easier to separate them from ore and recycled materials with a chemical process called sulfidation. This processing technique, as written about in a paper they published in the journal "Nature," allows the metals to remain in solid form and be separated without dissolving. This would avoid the typical but costly liquid s...
Powering up its mission to become the world's leading manufacturer of electric vehicles, Volkswagen Group has established a European public company to consolidate activities along the EV battery supply chain – from processing raw materials, to developing a unified Volkswagen battery, and managing the five European gigafactories the company has in the pipeline. The German automaker's new battery business will be headquartered in Salzgitter, Germany, which is the site of V...
A team of researchers at the University of Exeter, Minviro, the British Geological Survey, and the Circular Economy Solutions Unit has recently determined the benefits of utilizing a life cycle assessment (LCA) or "cradle to grave" evaluation in the ongoing endeavor to facilitate and improve green mining techniques. Generally used to assess the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of commercial products, from extraction to the use and disposal of said...
A team at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, including students at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, have achieved growth and characterization of large area, single-crystal graphene that has no wrinkles, folds or absorption layers. This could be said to be the most perfect graphene that has been grown and characterized, to date. "This pioneering breakthrough was due to many contributing...
As the world aspires to move away from fossil fuels and minimize carbon emissions, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new method to generate clean hydrogen fuel using scrap aluminum and water. Hydrogen fuel cells function by combining hydrogen and oxygen in an electrochemical process to produce electrical energy and water. While an incredible source of energy, with the only byproduct being water vapor, the extraction of hydrogen is not...
Idaho-focused mining company Perpetua Resources Corp. and Ambri Inc., a battery technology company born from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have forged a partnership that will help advance the antimony-based liquid-metal battery technology that can provide the large-scale energy storage needed to decarbonize electrical grids in the United States and around the world. "This agreement is a meaningful step in support of the current administration's goal...
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...
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...
Critical materials experts from the University of Birmingham are urging the United Kingdom to take quick action to ensure Britain has a stable supply of technology-critical metals essential for its transition to clean energy. "Our ability to deliver on our international commitments will doubtless be enabled or constrained by our access to the technology-critical metals that underpin the clean energy transition," said Sir John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the UK...
With solar panel production driving up the demand for tellurium, Rio Tinto plans to recover roughly 20 metric tons of this critical mineral per year from its Kennecott copper mine near Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the rarest stable elements on the periodic table, tellurium is almost always recovered as a byproduct of refining other metals it is associated with. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements...
Understanding that diverse and reliable supplies of critical minerals and metals are vital to the renewable energy, electric vehicles, and high-tech sectors, the European Union has set in motion a plan for more resilient supplies of these raw materials that will ensure Europe's ambition for a green and digital future. "We import lithium for electric cars, platinum to produce clean hydrogen, silicon metal for solar panels. 98% of the rare earth elements we need come from a sing...
Early last year, the U.S. Department of Energy launched three separate award programs to fund domestic private companies in developing nuclear reactors in the United States. Congress appropriated US$230 million to kick off this series of investments and through a cost-sharing partnership the DOE, will award amounts to private companies while expecting to invest close to US$4 billion over seven years with the partners providing at least 20% in matching funds. "All of these proj...
President-elect Joe Biden's plans to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure and move the world's biggest economy toward greener policies is brightening the outlook for base metals, including tougher-than-nails tungsten. Many countries, including the United States, have designated tungsten as a critical metal after China, which accounts for 80% of annual global tungsten production of 85,000 metric tons, have placed restrictions on its exports of the metal. Tungsten is often...
Recycling metals from spent lithium-ion batteries and rare earths from outmoded computers play a vital role in the United States reclaiming its critical mineral independence, according to Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. "Until our country can start mining and refining more of these materials or develop commercially viable substitutes, we must recycle as much critical mineral and REE content as we can from existing products," Brouillette penned in an editorial recently...
U.S. Department of Energy is funding up to $18 million for basic research aimed at helping to ensure the continued availability of rare earth elements, or effective substitutes, critical to the functioning of the modern U.S. economy. Rare earth elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, lanthanum and others are vital to a host of contemporary technological and industrial applications, ranging from magnets in electric motors and wind turbines, to speaker and other components in...
American Manganese Inc. Feb. 20 announced that its patented RecycLiCo process recovered up to 99.72% pure nickel-cobalt-manganese products generated from disassembled electric vehicle battery packs provided by a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Critical Materials Institute. The idea behind RecycLiCo emerged as an evolution of American Manganese's research into an efficient means of recovering manganese metals from relatively low-grade mineralization at its Artillery...
Chains are only as strong as their weakest link, and two United States federal agencies have determined that cobalt is the weak link in North America's electric vehicle supply chain. First Cobalt Corp. is doing its part to strengthen this link by delivering the cobalt sulfate needed for the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs from its refinery in Ontario and exploring its cobalt-rich Iron Creek project in Idaho. With the First Cobalt refinery in Canada on pace to begin...
Researchers in Australia and the United States have proven that gallium in its liquid form can economically capture and convert substantial quantities of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions. The process, reported in the Oct. 6 edition of Advanced Materials Journal, uses liquid gallium to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and a high-value solid carbon product that can be sold to manufacturers of batteries, aircraft, or construction materials. "We see very strong...
From the advancements of technology during the Bronze Age to the computers and telecommunication systems of today's Big Data Era, tin has been critical to human progress for at least 5,500 years. Sometime around 3500 BC, Sumerians living in modern day Turkey and Iran discovered that mixing a little tin with copper created bronze, an alloy that produced much more durable weapons and tools than those cast from copper alone. This cutting-edge discovery offered a strategic and...
An unsung war hero that saved countless American troops during World War II, an overlooked battery material that has played a pivotal role in storing electricity for more than 100 years, and a major ingredient in futuristic grid-scale energy storage, antimony is among the most important critical metalloids that most people have never heard of. While antimony may not be part of the common lexicon, humans have been using this semi-metal for more than 5,000 years. "For example,...
The envisioned green future where every North American is driving a battery-powered electric vehicle charged with renewable energy could be undermined by cobalt, a somewhat scarce and controversial metal that makes lithium-ion batteries better. "Cobalt is considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles in the short and medium term," the U.S. Department of Energy penned in an April report. This risk has automakers, lithium-ion battery manufacturers, and...
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are working with Powdermet Inc., an Ohio-based nanomaterials and advanced materials research and development company, to develop manganese-bismuth-based materials as an alternative to rare earths in permanent magnets. The motors in most electric vehicles made today contain rare earth permanent magnets, which leverage the naturally occurring strong magnetic force offered by rare earths such as neodymium o...
What are critical minerals, where do we find them, and why are they considered critical? These are among the questions that will be addressed by experts during a two-day virtual workshop hosted by Missouri University of Science and Technology on August 2-3. This "Resilient Supply of Critical Minerals" workshop will provide insight and answers to issues surrounding materials such as cobalt for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, germanium for transistors, tellurium for...
