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...
Looking to break America's reliance on China for rare earths and critical minerals, the U.S. Department of Energy is investing $140 million to develop a facility that extracts these minerals from unconventional sources and then refines them into the metals needed for electric vehicles, renewable energy generation, and other modern technologies. These technological advances are creating new demand for a suite of minerals and metals that are often rare and in short supply. In...
A mine that could suck billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it to stone while also producing the nickel, cobalt, and other metals needed for zero-emissions electric vehicles would be the ultimate prize for Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk. Carbin Minerals and Carbfix, two companies developing just that type of technology, have been awarded $1 million from XPRIZE, a global future-positive movement envisioned by Musk and supported by his foundation. XPRIZE...
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...
Coal ash, acid drainage, and tailings for future green economy As the world continues to prime itself for the global energy shift, academia, governments and the private sector are scrambling to extract the valuable minerals and metals necessary to power the low-carbon renewable future – resulting in some truly innovative and unconventional methods. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list often miss...
Researchers from the University of Manchester might have to adopt a new title: alchemists, as they may have discovered the 21st-century version of the philosopher's stone. But unlike the mystical substance of old, the modern golden transformation is thanks to a microscopically thin material that has been growing in popularity due to its miracle-like properties – graphene. "Graphene turns rubbish into gold, literally," said Andre Geim, a professor from the University of M...
To forge the second link in a wholly North American rare earths supply chain, Vital Metals Ltd. has begun feeding ore mined from its Nechalacho project in Northwest Territories into a dense media separation plant at its new rare earths extraction facility in Saskatchewan, Canada. The first link in this REE supply chain was established when Vital began mining high-grade ore from Nechalacho last year, which made the Australia-based miner Canada's first and only producer of the...
Global mining and metals company Rio Tinto has entered into a strategic partnership that includes a roughly US$10 million (C$12.5 million) investment in Nano One Materials Corp., a British Columbia-based company that has developed a technology equivalent to the "Instant Pot" of lithium battery cathode materials. While there has been a lot of buzz about the hundreds of factories being constructed around the globe to manufacture the lithium batteries needed for the electric...
Ontario has developed a mines-to-market critical minerals strategy that leverages rich stores of critical minerals in the northern reaches of the Canadian province, the already well-established mining sector found there, and the robust manufacturing sector that has been developed in the south. "The Critical Minerals Strategy is our government's blueprint to connect industries, resources and workers in our province's north to the future of manufacturing in the south as we...
The United States Department of Energy is investing $2.2 million to explore the holy grail of clean energy projects – a domestic mine that helps to supply the nickel and copper needed to achieve America's electric vehicle and renewable energy ambitions while also pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it as a mineral in rocks for geological periods of time. Global mining company Rio Tinto is contributing another $4 million and is leading this three-year r...
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...
In the depths of its test mine and lab in Tampere, Finland, Sandvik has secretly been carrying out underground tests on a cabinless, electrified, and automated concept loader that showcases the Swedish company's vision for the future of mining equipment. Clandestinely developed in a facility dubbed Area 52, this concept loader is equipped with Sandvik's Automine, an automation solution that allows the cutting-edge mining machine to navigate through the rough and changing...
Focused on environmentally sound production of lithium, Cornish Lithium Ltd. is testing new technologies to extract the battery metal from geothermal waters at its United Downs facility in Cornwall, a region emblematic of the storied mining history and promising future in the United Kingdom. Cornwall traces its mining roots back more than 4,000 years to mines that churned out Bronze Age tin and copper. Beginning late in the 19th century, however, the enduring and proud traditi...
Canada Silver Cobalt Works Inc. has developed an innovative extraction process designed to economically remove and recycle various minerals and metals from spent electric vehicle batteries. The junior mining company's Re-2Ox closed-loop process is designed to produce cobalt sulfate to industry specifications for reuse in new EV batteries. Canada Silver Cobalt recently hired SGS Canada to design and build a pilot plant in anticipation of bringing the benefits of its...
Rio Tinto has made the first sale of aluminum-scandium alloy from its plant in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, offering a North American supply of scandium, a metal deemed critical to the United States and Canada. This first batch of aluminum-scandium alloy from Rio Tinto's Quebec operations will be delivered to Amaero, an Australian-based company known for manufacturing large-format complex components in metal with laser-based metal 3D printing. This alloy is to be made from the...
After a decade of meticulous planning, Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. has received a Quebec government environmental decree to begin developing a mine at its Matawinie project that has been designed to offer lithium-ion battery manufacturers a carbon neutral source of graphite. "I founded Nouveau Monde 10 years ago, and today's decree is a huge milestone for us all," said Nouveau Monde Graphite President and CEO Eric Desaulniers. "With this green light to launch our Matawinie...
Industrial Age iron mines in the eastern Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York may find new life as domestic sources of the rare earth elements needed in today's Information Age. Mined heavily for iron in the 1800s and early 1900s, the eastern Adirondack Mountains played an important role in industrialization prior to and during World War II. The deposits that helped to build America's transformation from horse powered to horsepower also happened to host significant...
VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. has acquired full rights to a unique, low-carbon emitting means of extracting vanadium, another key to its goal of unlocking the potential of vanadium redox flow batteries as a sustainable renewable energy storage solution. "We have achieved another critical step in our strategic plan to rapidly advance VanadiumCorp's sustainable assets," said VanadiumCorp Resource CEO Adriaan Bakker. These assets are found along the entire vanadium redox flow...
Best known for its contribution to advancing the Round Top rare earths and critical minerals mine project, Texas Mineral Resources Corp. is now leading a group targeting the development of a plant capable of recovering rare earths from Pennsylvania coal byproducts. The Texas-based mineral explorer is teaming up with Penn State University; Jeddo Coal Company, a family-run mining company with a Pennsylvania operation; and H22OS Consulting, an engineering and construction firm...
Group 11 Technologies Inc., a US-based company developing a means of dissolving metals while they are still underground and pumping the metal-rich solution to the surface, has officially been launched. Given its name refers to the Group 11 elements on the periodic table – copper, silver, and gold – these coinage metals are likely the primary targets of the newly formed private company. Group 11 is a partnership between enCore Energy Corp., EnviroLeach Technologies Inc., and...
A hardener of the steels that have been helping to make Fords tough for more than a century and an element with unique properties that make it the key ingredient in enormous batteries to store intermittent wind- and solar-generated electricity, vanadium is a critical metal with many valences. It is vanadium's chemical valences that make this alloying metal an ideal ingredient in the redox flow batteries that scientists and governments see as the ideal large-scale storage...
Global governments and industries are setting increasingly ambitious targets for the phasing out of fossil fuel-burning automobiles in favor of electric vehicles charged with green energy. Achieving these grand climate objectives, however, is going to require an equally bold strategy to ensure there are plentiful supplies of the new generation of energy minerals and metals critical to building this revolution in the way the world generates and uses energy. The World Bank...
From electric vehicles plugged into renewable energy to smartphones connected to 5G networks, new technologies take advantage of the special properties of a suite of critical minerals and metals that are often rare and in short supply. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list includes even more obscure mined materials such as gallium, germanium, scandium, and tellurium. While scarce, these critical...
Reminiscent of America's gilded age, the world is priming itself for a new era of technology and energy centered on the electricity that sparked the imaginations of visionaries such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. This new era, however, sets aside more than a century of burning fossil fuels in favor of new clean sources of the electricity that will power human innovation into the 21st century and beyond. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are but a few of the methods...
Scandium, one of 35 minerals identified as being critical to future production of high-tech and industrial technologies in the West, is seeing a surge in mining and extraction activity in response to increasing demand for the soft, silvery metallic element. Scandium is not particularly rare – its occurrence in crustal rocks is around 22 parts per million. It is generally more plentiful than lead, mercury, and precious metals. Yet scandium rarely concentrates in nature, so t...
