The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Pentagon awards Doe Run $7 million to help scale up a cobalt and nickel processing plant in The Show-Me State. As part of a larger objective to ensure the United States has reliable domestic supplies of the minerals and metals critical to the nation's economy and security, the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded The Doe Run Resources Corp. $7 million to complete a demonstration-scale hydrometallurgical plant for separation of cobalt and nickel at their facility in...
New rules would allow the testing needed to build an open-pit mine over the largest hard rock lithium deposit in the U.S. In a unanimous vote, the Board of Environmental Protection has amended Maine's prohibitive mining rules to allow for open-pit excavation of certain clean energy metals. The provisional amendment, still under final consideration, is the refinement of a state law adopted last July intended to restrict mining and processing resources containing polluting sulfi...
Despite investing billions of dollars, US continues to rely heavily on China and others for its supply of critical minerals. The 2024 edition of U.S. Geological Survey's annual Mineral Commodity Summaries shows the United States has made little headway in breaking its reliance on China and other overseas nations for the minerals and metals critical to the nation's clean energy ambitions, economic well-being, and defense. "Our mineral import dependence continues to be a gaping...
Reshoring mineral supply chains lost to globalization is a key part of DOD National Defense Industrial Strategy The urgency to onshore critical mineral supply chains in the United States has begun to shift away from a need to secure reliable sources of the minerals and metals needed to support the nation's economy and clean energy ambitions toward the need for these same mined commodities to defend American ideals and interests at home and abroad. "Establishing a fully...
Five years ago, Maine native Mary Freeman and her husband Gary went gem-hunting for tourmaline on their property in the woods of Plumbago Mountain. Instead of the popular semiprecious stone they were seeking, they discovered what appears to be the richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world – a formation of gigantic lithium-bearing spodumene crystals with an estimated value of $1.5 billion. The timing of their discovery, officially called Plumbago North, is fortuitous...
A growing imbalance in the supply and demand for rare earths is creating a challenge for the companies that produce this suite of technology elements and an opportunity for the scientists seeking ways to leverage their unique properties in new and intriguing ways. While it is true that the global transition to zero-carbon energy and transportation is creating new rare earths demand that threatens to outstrip the global supply, the real disparity has more to do with which of...
As the White House continues to dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to position America as the global leader in clean energy and digital technologies, Beijing initiates a strategy to put America in check with the global economy equivalent of pawns. These pawns in the technology chess match between the U.S. and China are gallium and germanium, a pair of semiconductor metals used to make the computer chips essential to every facet of modern life. Before all the major news o...
From rare earths in Northern Maine to lithium in Southern California and graphite in Alaska, the U.S. Geological Survey is on a mission to discover minerals critical to the nation's economy and clean energy goals on American soil. Or, more accurately, under American soil. This nationwide endeavor is officially called the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, but is better known as Earth MRI, a clever moniker that reflects the earth penetrating scans that are providing...
Back in 1908, when Ford Motor Company first started cranking out the Model T, the innovative automaker championed new materials, new engineering designs, and new manufacturing practices. More than a century later, automotive companies are emulating Henry Ford's strategy as they tackle the supply chain challenges of a similarly groundbreaking electric vehicle revolution. Styled these days as 'vertical integration production,' Henry Ford's idea of "a continuous, nonstop process...
Mining giant BHP and Toyota Australia have teamed up to convert the Land Cruiser 70, a rugged and retro Toyota workhorse in Australia, to an electric truck that will retain the toughness for which this vehicle is renowned but without the exhaust that comes with the typical 4.5-liter diesel V8 engine. Available in SUV and pickup versions, the Land Cruiser 70 has been produced in Australia since 1984 and is a popular vehicle in the mines there. An electric Land Cruiser 70 is...
A ransomware attack that has forced Copper Mountain Mining Corp. to shut down operations at its namesake mine in southern British Columbia elevates concerns about the vulnerability of mining operations that are increasingly dependent on digital technologies. With its computer systems coming under attack late in the day on Dec. 27, the Copper Mountain IT team quickly implemented risk management systems and protocols to limit the damage and ensure safety at the mine. These...
From flashlights to supercomputers, tin is the glue for an electronic age Lost in the clamor for lithium, nickel and other metals needed for the batteries powering electric vehicles and modern electronics, or the rare earth elements that turn stored energy into motion, is the enormous need for a much more modest metal that is so fundamental to the advancement of technology that it almost goes unseen – tin. While other technology metals are critical to certain products and s...
Electric Vehicles require six times the minerals than their fossil fuel forebearers With even the most basic models boasting sophisticated driver-assist, navigation, infotainment, diagnostics, and other advanced digital systems being fed power from oversized versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in your laptop or smartphone, electric vehicles are becoming personal computers that you can drive. While this puts a whole new spin on the term mobile computing, riding around i...
Tungsten could be held ransom unless domestic mines open Tungsten, or wolfram, is the 74th element on the periodic table of elements and, like many other metals that have found their way onto critical mineral lists in Canada, Europe, and the United States, this sturdy metal is vulnerable to supply disruption. Tungsten has been known since prehistoric times, and as far back as 350 years ago, Chinese porcelain makers were using this element as a pigment to incorporate a unique...
CO2 reduction path for mines is difficult but not impossible Aligned with global climate goals agreed upon in international pacts such as the Paris Agreement, most of the major mining companies that will supply the raw materials required to build the low-carbon future have declared their own targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 to 40% by 2030 and net-zero by 2050. How likely is it that this industrial sector known for its enormous diesel-powered digging and hauling...
From the 1,774 feet below sea level depths of a Michigan mine to the 14,115-foot-high summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado, television producer J.F. Musial and his team broke a Guinness World Record by driving a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo for the greatest altitude change ever achieved by an electric vehicle – 15,889 feet, or just over three miles. And, as a crew that usually spends their time making car films, Musial and his creative team videoed the epic trek. "It started as a...
Triumph Gold Corp. says feeding tomes of data generated from years of exploration at Freegold Mountain into Minerva Intelligence Inc.'s DRIVER artificial intelligence technology has identified previously unrecognized mineral resource expansion targets in and around the Revenue and Nucleus deposits on this gold-copper project in Canada's Yukon. A large road-accessible project in Yukon's Dawson Range, Freegold Mountain hosts near-surface porphyry gold-copper deposits and related...
Faster, cheaper, and less carbon-intensive, a new 1,000-meter-long trolley assisting fully-loaded mining haul trucks out of the pit at Copper Mountain Mining Corp.'s mine in British Columbia is proving to be a successful step toward the company's goal to be a net-zero carbon emissions miner by 2035. "We are proud to be the first open pit mine to commission electric trolley assist haulage in North America," said Copper Mountain Mining President and CEO Gil Clausen. "Through...
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...
Many workers at the Gahcho Kué diamond mine in Canada's Northwest Territories would have never imagined that they would be working alongside a robot dog. Yet, the distinctive steady rhythm produced as the four-legged Boston Dynamics Spot robot makes its rounds is now becoming routine at the arctic operation. "Most express amazement that walking robots in the workplace are now a reality, even though they may have envisioned it as a child," De Beers Group penned in a news releas...
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...
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...
From jewelry at a black-tie soiree to scrubbing harmful emissions from the exhaust system of a farm truck, the six platinum group metals – platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium – are metals that are both precious and critical to the United States and Canada. Extremely rare, durable, and with a brilliance that does not tarnish, platinum and other metals in its group are a treasured choice for high-end jewelry that stands the test of time. Three of the...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the metals, tungsten's toughness is legendary. Like many of the other metals that have found their way onto critical mineral lists in Canada, Europe, and the United States, this durable metal is vulnerable to Chinese control. "World tungsten supply was dominated by production in China and exports from China," the U.S. Geological Survey inked in its 2021 mineral commodities report. It is estimated that mines in China...
Coal-fired power plants have been inadvertently creating deposits of rare earth elements while producing low-cost electricity for American consumers. Eyeing the untapped potential in the ashes of decades of burning coal, researchers at Purdue University have developed a sustainable way to extract and separate these tightly interlocked elements into the metals needed for modern technology. And any efficient and environmentally friendly process developed to separate REEs found i...
