The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Highly promising startup reveals first commercial-scale rare earth element refinery in the US. Rising from the ashes, an American startup that was early in the field of rare earth element separation, Phoenix Tailings, has made a brilliant comeback with the announcement of the first rare earth refinery to begin production in the United States. Founded in 2018, Boston-based Phoenix Tailings had a significant head start at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing the potential...
Rio Tinto, Fortune Minerals team up to recover critical minerals at Nico refinery in Alberta. To bolster the North American supply of critical minerals, global mining giant Rio Tinto and Canadian mine developer Fortune Minerals Ltd. are working together to improve the recovery of bismuth and cobalt from ore and waste streams. "We are committed to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs to grow and decarbonize," said Rio Tinto Kennecott Managing Director Nate...
Chosen as one of 16 projects across 12 states, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's "Re-Mining Red Mud Waste for CO2 Capture and Storage and Critical Element Recovery" (RMCCS-CER) project will receive $1 million in funding to advance a technology that may kill two birds with one stone in the race for critical materials. Announced in November, as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Mining Innovations for Negative...
Replacing this oft-maligned lithium-ion battery metal comes at a cost Traditionally a headline-grabbing metal due to the perceived human rights and monetary costs it adds to lithium-ion batteries and the electric vehicles they power, cobalt is being overshadowed by the enormous demand and price increases for the lithium and nickel that also go into the storage cells that deliver the "E" to the EV revolution. Cobalt, however, continues to be a vital ingredient that improves...
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...
Aptly named startup Phoenix Tailings seeks to transform a core concern within the mining sector, the waste materials from mining, into a profitable and sustainable new solution and market. Founded in 2018, Boston-based Phoenix Tailings saw potential untapped value in the waste left behind by the refining of metals and decided to get into the business of mining this mine waste, which could revolutionize the sector if done sustainably and economically. Intending to leverage this...
As lithium-ion battery and electric car companies seek reliable and ethical sources of cobalt, Fortune Minerals Ltd. has sights set on supplying some of that cobalt – along with copper, gold and bismuth – from its Nico mine project in Northwest Territories and associated refinery in Canada. Over the past two decades, Fortune has advanced Nico from an in-house mineral discovery to a development stage project that could produce two critical metals, a third metal vital to an ele...
Many in the United States, from President Donald Trump to sector analysts, have been raising the alarms about America's heavy dependence on China for rare earth elements and other critical minerals and metals. Most of this talk has centered on the geopolitical risks associated with depending on an economic and strategic rival for more than 80 percent of these 17 metals vital to a wide array of high-tech and military devices. Instead of export restrictions resulting from...
The envisioned green future where every North American is driving a battery-powered electric vehicle charged with renewable energy could be undermined by cobalt, a somewhat scarce and controversial metal that makes lithium-ion batteries better. "Cobalt is considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles in the short and medium term," the U.S. Department of Energy penned in an April report. This risk has automakers, lithium-ion battery manufacturers, and...
