The Elements of Innovation Discovered

(14) stories found containing 'department of commerce'


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  • Infographic showing all the minerals and metals in an electric vehicle battery.

    China adds graphite to export restrictions

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Nov 10, 2023

    Following gallium, germanium curbs, China announces plan to restrict its exports of critical lithium-ion battery material on Dec 1. Three months into its restrictions on exports of the critical computer chipmaking metals gallium and germanium, China announced that it will also be limiting global shipments of graphite, the largest single ingredient in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. On Oct. 20, China's Ministry of Commerce posted notices that the exports of nine...

  • An image of an electronic filing system being inspected with a magnifying glass.

    Paperwork: top danger to commodities?

    K. Warner, For Metal Tech News|Updated Nov 1, 2023

    The minerals commodities industry may be worth trillions, but it has lost billions in less than a decade to fraud perpetrated by industry insiders due to roughly half of the world's mining companies and their warehousing networks still relying on paper documents. This industrial blind spot has been made public by a series of news reports of fraud in metals trading, with the latest incidents having revealed devastating inadequacies in the records and storage systems of...

  • Computer-generated image of a blue circuit board with an orange glow.

    Makers of graphene, EMI devices team up

    Rose Ragsdale, For Metal Tech News|Updated Oct 11, 2023

    Moving to seize opportunities presented by a rapidly emerging manufacturing sector in the cybersecurity industry, graphene maker HydroGraph Clean Power Inc. is teaming up with Kansas-based EMP Shield Inc., a leader in protecting devices from destructive interference caused by electromagnetic airwaves. Under the collaboration, the companies aim to develop advanced electromagnetic interference shielding products using HydroGraph's high-purity graphene. Electromagnetic interferen...

  • Closeup of a bundle of copper wire strands.

    US lawmakers: Copper is critical, period

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Jun 13, 2023

    Arizona lawmaker defies USGS with bill that would elevate copper onto the list of minerals deemed critical to the US. Copper is critical – this is the message a group of Western lawmakers is sending to the U.S. Geological Survey with the Copper is Critical Act. This bill, which was introduced to the House by Congressman Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., on June 8, consists of one sentence that defines minerals critical to the United States as copper and whatever other minerals, e...

  • A view of the ends of various-sized copper cables for electrical transmission.

    A push to add copper to US critical list

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Jun 8, 2023
    1

    US business and political leaders call on USGS to expediently add copper to list of critical minerals. Copper is essential to a global economy that favors low-carbon electricity powerlines over fossil fuel-filled pipelines to deliver future energy needs. But does the green energy demand make the red metal critical? So far, copper has not been elevated to the official list of minerals and metals deemed critical to the United States. A surprisingly broad spectrum of politicians...

  • View across South Saskatchewan River; the Saskatoon city skyline at night.

    A rare earth supply chain master link

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Apr 16, 2023

    Summit spotlights Saskatoon as an emerging rare earths hub in North America Saskatoon, a small city in the heart of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is emerging as the master link in a North American rare earth supply chain with connections in Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States. This city of just over 300,000 people on the Canadian Prairies is not gaining notoriety as a major North American rare earth hub due to rich deposits of this suite of 15 enigmatic...

  • Aerial view of Bornite exploration camp in Alaska’s Ambler Mining District.

    Critical minerals war in the White House

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Apr 16, 2023

    The White House's bold clean energy ambitions, which are intricately linked to the availability of reliable supplies of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure, are being slowed by a tug-o-war between departments within the Biden administration. While the departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy are forging ahead with programs and investments aimed at ensuring America has the minerals and metals needed to support the clean energy...

  • President Biden next to a Corvette Z06 showcased a the revived Detroit car show.

    Biden's new surge of EV recycling funding

    A.J. Roan, Metal Tech News|Updated Nov 29, 2022

    Furthering its climate goals and hoping to continue strengthening the nation's battery supply chain, the Biden administration has allotted $74 million to advance technologies and processes for the recycling and reuse of electric vehicle batteries. The number of EVs on the road since Biden moved into the Oval Office has tripled and the demand for critical battery minerals, such as lithium and graphite, is projected to increase by as much as 4,000% in the coming decades....

  • Piles of rare earth oxides used for magnets, batteries, and high-tech products.

    Making rare earths separation less rare

    Shane Lasley, Data Mine North|Updated Oct 10, 2022

    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...

  • Piles of rare earth element oxides with many high-tech and industrial purposes.

    It's OK, USA Rare Earth plant coming soon

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Jul 12, 2022

    The rare earth magnets that help wind turbines transform a breeze into low-carbon electricity and then convert that energy to horsepower in the motors of electric vehicles will soon be made in Oklahoma. On June 9, USA Rare Earth LLC announced it bought a 309,0000-square-foot building in Stillwater, an Oklahoma city that boasts a growing high-tech economy, to house its rare earth elements processing and magnets plant. "Oklahoma has long been on the cutting edge of energy...

  • titanium vanadium alloys aerospace redox renewable energy grid batteries

    U.S. Vanadium calls for government help

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 10, 2022

    U.S. Vanadium Holding Company LLC, an Arkansas-based producer of high-purity vanadium pentoxide, is urging the United States government to take steps to bolster domestic production of vanadium. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, roughly 94% of the titanium used in the U.S. last year went into stronger, lighter, and more durable steels and other alloys. Vanadium-alloyed steels are used in virtually every high-strength structural steel application in military equipment,...

  • Alaska Republican Senator Murkowski American Energy Innovations Act

    Energy legislation stalls in US Senate

    Rose Ragsdale, For Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 2, 2022

    The American Energy Innovations Act, legislation hailed as Congress' best chance to modernize the nation's energy policies in more than 12 years, bogged down in the U.S. Senate in early March after a dispute erupted among several lawmakers over an amendment aimed at limiting hydrofluorocarbons emissions from home appliances. The legislation, introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and ranking committee member...

  • United States Geological Survey USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020 cover

    USGS report informs critical mineral policy

    Shane Lasley, Metal Tech News|Updated Jul 2, 2022

    The United States depends on foreign countries for more than 50 percent of its supply of 31 minerals considered critical to the nation's economic wellbeing and national security, including 100 percent import-reliant for 14 of them, according to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020, a recent U.S. Geological Survey report. The list of mined commodities for which the U.S. is fully reliant on foreign nations for its supply is littered with high-tech minerals and metals needed for rene...

  • vanadium Critical Minerals Alliances redox flow battery IDTechEx VanadiumCorp

    Battery valences power vanadium demand

    Shane Lasley, Data Mine North|Updated May 15, 2022

    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...