The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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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... Full story
The ore sorter at Vital Metals Ltd.'s Nechalacho rare earths project in Canada's Northwest Territories is able to upgrade lower-grade ore into concentrates viable for shipping to the company's soon-to-be-completed processing facility in Saskatchewan for further upgrading to a mixed rare earths carbonate ready to be separated into the individual rare earths used in a broad range of high-tech and industrial applications. This means Vital will be able to produce more rare earths... Full story
Above and beyond its agreement to sell cobalt hydroxide feed material to Electra Battery Materials Corp., Glencore has signed a five-year tolling contract for the use of Electra's refinery in Ontario to upgrade additional cobalt hydroxide into battery-grade cobalt. Glencore has been a strong supporter of Electra for a number of years, funding the initial engineering studies and providing technical input as the Canada-based company advanced development of its First Cobalt... Full story
The U.S. Geological Survey has finalized a list of 50 minerals and metals critical to the United States. While seemingly a large increase over the 35 critical minerals on the 2018 list, most of the additions are from individually listing the constituents of two mineral groups, rare earth elements and platinum group metals. In addition to listing each rare earth and platinum group element individually, the changes to the list of U.S. critical minerals include the addition of...
Intrigued by Electra Battery Materials Corp.'s vision of developing a hydroelectric-powered battery materials park in Ontario, Talon Metals Corp. has joined a partnership that will investigate the potential of using this emerging Canadian facility to upgrade nickel produced at its coming Tamarack Mine in Minnesota into the battery-grade nickel sulfate needed for the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles. This partnership, which also includes the Ontario government a...
Part of a much larger critical minerals investment and strategy unveiled by the Biden administration on Feb. 22, the Pentagon has awarded MP Materials Corp. a $35 million contract to commercially separate and refine heavy rare earth elements at its Mountain Pass Mine. Located in California's Mojave Desert, Mountain Pass is currently the only mine in the United States that produces rare earths, a group of 17 elements critical to a wide array of technologies used for industrial...
The quest to generate clean energy like that produced inside our Sun and other stars moved a step closer to reality recently when scientists in the United Kingdom broke the record for power released in a sustained fusion reaction. In early February, scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility reported producing 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds (11 megawatts of power) in a fusion reaction, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997...
Redwood Materials Inc., an American battery recycling company that has been quietly prepping for an energy transition before it became a well-circulated buzzword, has already begun its own transition to the European market. Founded in 2017 by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, this forward-thinking recycling company has rapidly climbed to a valuation of $3.8 billion as of September 2021. In a recent interview, Associated Press journalist Tom Krishner asked Straubel whether Redwood... Full story
With the recent completion of a $2 million expansion, US Vanadium Holding Company LLC is now able to produce up to 4 million liters of ultra-high-purity electrolyte for vanadium redox flow batteries per year at its facility in Hot Springs, Arkansas. "We are very pleased to announce the completion of this major expansion of our ability to produce ultra-high-purity electrolyte for vanadium redox flow batteries," said US Vanadium CEO Mark Smith. "This milestone establishes...
Two brothers in a Rice University laboratory noticed a fascinating result during the production of the miracle material graphene that could potentially change the way it is manufactured – by listening to the sound it makes. The brothers, John Li, a Rice alumnus now studying at Stanford University, and Victor Li, then a high school student in New York and now a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are co-lead authors of a paper that describes real-time a...
Alberta has been chosen as the best locale to develop a critical minerals refinery that would process concentrates from Fortune Minerals Ltd.'s planned Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine in Canada's Northwest Territories. A mine at Nico and an associated hydrometallurgical refinery in a Canadian province would produce an average of 1,800 metric tons of battery-grade cobalt sulfate; 1,700 metric tons of bismuth; 300 metric tons of copper; and 47,000 ounces of gold annually ov...
Seeking greener and more efficient technology for the production of advanced lithium materials for rechargeable batteries, Australia-based Albemarle Corp. has entered into a joint development agreement with 6K, a United States-based company that has developed a cutting-edge microwave-controlled plasma technology for producing advanced materials. Dubbed UniMelt, this patented technology leverages the physics of plasma chemistry to produce high-purity and customized materials...
As the competition for supplies of the minerals and metals needed to build electric vehicles heats up, Tesla Inc. has cut a deal to secure the nickel for the lithium-ion batteries to power its future EVs from Talon Metals Corp.'s Tamarack project in Minnesota. Located 54 miles west of Duluth, the Tamarack project is slated to produce roughly 28 million pounds of nickel, plus 17 million lb of copper, per year over the first nine years of mining. Talon's commitment to reducing t...
In further investigation into the natural antimicrobial properties of copper, researchers at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, have discovered that using a thin-film coating of copper or copper compounds can enhance the metals' natural ability to inactivate or destroy bacteria and viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19, by saturating contamination with nano-copper. In a study that began soon after the pandemic hit in March 2020, University of...
Scientists in Australia have developed a copper material that kills deadly bacteria two minutes after contact and could prove effective in destroying SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. A team from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, working in collaboration with CSIRO, the science research agency of the Australia government, reported in the January 2022 edition of the scientific journal, "Biomaterials," that the copper innovation kills bacteria more than 100...
Announced just before the end of 2021, a team led by the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron or DESY research center, laid the foundation for an alternative method of storing hydrogen gas using palladium nanoparticles wrapped around a core of iridium, which can attract and accumulate hydrogen like a kind of chocolate glaze. Considered a promising energy carrier of the future, hydrogen as fuel presents its own set of problems and challenges. Although a suitable and potentially...
Although delayed by a few extra days, a historic event occurred this Christmas with the launch of what is set to become mankind's most powerful "eye" into the unknown, the James Webb Space Telescope. Composed of 18 4.3 feet diameter hexagonal-shaped mirror segments, with a central primary mirror of 21.4 feet, years of innovation, ingenious problem-solving, and sheer determination have set the stage for a view into the cosmos we may never have even conceived of before....
Getting ahead of the expected growing demand for vanadium redox flow batteries in North America, Austria-based Enerox GmbH has significantly expanded its agreement to buy electrolyte for its CellCube VRFB from US Vanadium LLC. "As part of our go-to-market in North America, we want to use electrolyte which has been regionally processed within North America ensuring long-term deliverability at a competitive price," said CellCube CEO Alexander Schoenfeldt. After an expansion... Full story
On Feb. 22, 2022, Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska became the largest critical minerals operation in the United States, both in terms of quantity and value of the materials produced at this world-class base, precious, and critical minerals operation. Being catapulted to America's top dog when it comes to critical minerals production is not due to the germanium produced, though this semiconductor metal vital to ultrafast computing and communications is... Full story
Now that masks made with its patented ZENGuard antimicrobial graphene coating are being commercially produced, Zentek Ltd. is looking at other ways to leverage the superlative qualities of the graphene it produces to make the world a better place. This includes research into making better lithium batteries with graphene-coated silicon as the anode. As an anode material, silicon has shown the ability to have up to 10 times more storage capacity than the graphite that is... Full story
Imagine a small autonomous vehicle that could drive over land, stop, and flatten itself into a quadcopter; well, you don't have to imagine very hard as engineers from Virginia Tech have combined the use of rubber, low melting point metal, and temperature to create a robot that can morph to perform different functions. Nature alone is rife with organisms that can change their shape to achieve different tasks, like an octopus that can dramatically shift and mold itself to move,... Full story
It is an inconvenient truth that the low-carbon future envisioned by world leaders that gathered for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, cannot be built without massive new supplies of minerals and metals. While battery metals, rare earths, and other critical minerals have garnered the spotlight for their role in building this future of traveling and transporting goods with electric vehicles charged with renewable energy – and rightfully so – the inc... Full story
Tesla Inc. has cut a deal with Syrah Resources Ltd. to supply the single largest ingredient in most lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles – graphite. More specifically, the renowned electric automaker has entered into an offtake agreement for natural graphite active anode material, also known as coated spherical graphite, from Syrah's Vidalia processing facility in Louisiana. The anodes in lithium-ion batteries that power most EVs are packed full of graphite that h... Full story
Looking to establish itself as a major new player in the technology metals and energy transition metals space, Welsbach Technology Metals Acquisition Corp. has launched a $75 million initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Market. Led by CEO Daniel Mamadou, a technology metals advisor with more than 20 years of experience in global banking, Welsbach is being established as a blank check company that will use the funds raised through its IPO to invest in and support... Full story
Pennsylvanian coal helped to fuel America's Industrial Revolution, and mines in the Keystone State have since provided a domestic source of iron ore, cobalt, nickel, and various other metals. Now, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have identified a potential motherlode of battery metals to feed into America's EV Revolution in waste left behind by more than two centuries of mining in the commonwealth. "Preliminary estimates indicate that waste left by coal mining... Full story
