The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - September 22, 2024
A drill tests the Eureka Zone, which hosts more than 8 billion lb of nickel, 2 billion lb of copper, 630 million lb of cobalt, and 5 million oz of platinum-palladium-gold.
Brucite is a mineral often associated with nickel deposits that react with carbon dioxide to form magnesium carbonate, a mineral that stores CO2 for geological scales of time.
Core from drilling through zone of nickel-enriched ultramafic rock at Eureka Zone on Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project.
Alaska Energy Metals has partnered with the Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Polytechnic Institute to determine how much carbon dioxide a mine at its Nikolai project in Alaska could capture and store while also providing a domestic supply of nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals (PGMs) for the energy transition.
Research has shown that ultramafic rocks, such as those found within the more than 8-billion-pound Eureka nickel deposit at Nikolai, are enriched with magnesium minerals that react with CO2 in the atmosphere. This interaction locks up the CO2 in carbonate rocks and stores the greenhouse gas for geological scales of time.
Under natural conditions, this carbon sequestration process is limited due to a lack of contact between atmospheric CO2 and ultramafic rocks that are mostly buried beneath Earth's surface. Digging up these CO2-absorbing rocks and then crushing them to extract the desired minerals creates the ideal exposure needed for the rock-forming carbon sequestration process to take place.
Last year, the Colorado School Mines received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop a novel technological solution for assessing the CO2-absorbing potential of mining ultramafic deposits enriched with nickel, copper, cobalt, and PGMs. The cutting-edge scanning technology and advanced machine learning algorithms developed under this program are now being applied to Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project.
"We are extremely excited to engage in this partnership with Alaska Energy Metals on a real-life project that will potentially provide a secure domestic source of energy-related metals while simultaneously sequester carbon to slow global warming," said Colorado School of Mines Professor of Economic Geology Thomas Monecke.
The nickel, copper, cobalt, PGMs, and gold within the Eureka deposit at Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project is disseminated in roughly 1.7 billion metric tons of potentially CO2-absorbing ultramafic rock.
Core from drilling through zone of nickel-enriched ultramafic rock at Eureka Zone on Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project.
According to a calculation completed earlier this year, Eureka hosts 813 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.22% (3.88 billion lb) nickel, 0.07% (1.28 billion lb) copper, 0.02% (303 million lb) cobalt, and 0.15 grams per metric ton (4 million oz) palladium-platinum-gold.
In addition, the deposit hosts 896 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.21% (4.23 billion lb) nickel, 0.05% (1.04 billion lb) copper, 0.02% (327 million lb) cobalt, and 0.12 g/t (1.3 million oz) palladium-platinum-gold.
Under their partnership with Alaska Energy Metals, Colorado School of Mines and Virginia Polytechnic Institute are carrying out a pilot project to determine how much CO2 a mine at this world-class-sized deposit of energy transition metals will absorb.
"U.S. domestic mining is essential for both the electrical energy expansion and for U.S. national security. For these reasons, we have intentionally begun to study and assess the use of modern technological innovations like ultramafic mine tailings carbonation at the early stages of the development phase of our project," said Alaska Energy Metals President and CEO Greg Beischer.
The first step of the study will be to determine the quantity and characteristics of the magnesium-rich minerals within the Eureka Zone. Previous work carried out at the University of British Columbia has identified brucite as a particularly powerful CO2-absorbing magnesium mineral – olivine, pyroxene, and anorthite are others.
Brucite is a mineral often associated with nickel deposits that react with carbon dioxide to form magnesium carbonate, a mineral that stores CO2 for geological scales of time.
Once the magnesium mineralization is quantified and characterized, the researchers will complete modeling to show how much CO2 can be sequestered into one ton of tailings produced at a future Eureka Mine.
This will provide a framework that can be used to determine how much this process can be expected to lower the carbon footprint of producing nickel and other energy transition metals at Eureka, as well as any potential economic benefits that might come with the CO2 sequestration.
"Every step leaves a footprint, and this pilot project will allow us to move one step further in the right direction," said Monecke.
Editors Note: This article was originally published in the Sept. 20 edition of North of 60 Mining News, a sister publication to Metal Tech News that provides comprehensive and in-depth coverage of mining and mineral exploration in Alaska and Canada's North.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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