The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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While the recent call from conservationists and sportsmen for the Trump administration to block permits has cast a shadow of doubt on the development of a mine at Pebble, there is no denying the controversial Alaska project encompasses a world-class store of precious, industrial and critical minerals. A recent recalculation of the Pebble resource shows the deposit hosts roughly a third of the world's known rhenium, an extremely rare metal that lends its exceptional heat...
While the importance of rare earth metals is widely acknowledged in manufacturing sophisticated devices for use in space, defense, clean, green and consumer technologies, the increasingly innovative and effective roles REE are playing in the development of new medicines and medical technologies get little public attention. New developments in medical technology are expected to increase the use of surgical lasers, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography...
Two metals, nickel and titanium, come together in a unique alloy that is gaining popularity in new applications, including in outer space. Known as "nitinol," this high-demand metal is prized for its ability to snap back to a heat-trained shape after being pulled, twisted or deformed. Accidentally discovered by metallurgist William Buehler at the Navy Ordinance Laboratories in 1959, nitinol has been used in increasingly sophisticated applications over the years, finding...
Recovering scandium from its iron-titanium mine in Quebec, tellurium from the Kennecott copper mine in Utah, and now lithium from its Boron mine in California, Rio Tinto is leveraging its operations to produce the critical metals needed for 3D printing, solar energy, and lithium batteries. On April 7, the global miner announced that it has begun producing battery-grade lithium from waste rock at its Boron mine site at the western edge of the Mojave Desert. The mine is...
X-MAT recently announced a collaboration with the Battery Innovation Center, to determine further improvements of X-MAT's electrode fabrication technology, which dramatically increases the storage capacity of graphite recovered from recycled batteries With lithium-ion battery markets projected to increase by 25% annually, resulting in 14-fold growth by 2030, X-MAT has long prepared for the necessity of battery recycling and has sought to further refine its X-BATT technology....
Drifting some 250 miles above the Earth, researchers aboard the International Space Station have enlisted the help from some of the smallest miners in the universe, microbes. These off-world experiments tested the possibility of using these tiny organisms to convert unsuitable space rock and regolith into soil for growing plants and food, as well as extracting valuable minerals and metals from extraterrestrial materials. Published in Nature Communications, the findings by a...
Exploits Discovery Corp. is the latest in a rapidly growing group of mineral exploration companies to use GoldSpot Discoveries Corp.'s machine learning technology and geoscience expertise to help refine drill targets on its property. With four Newfoundland gold projects geologically, geochemically, and structurally similar to New Found Gold Corp.'s Queensway project, Exploits is familiar with GoldSpot's artificial intelligence exploration expertise. Earlier this year, New...
Europe takes a different approach to education by developing a video game modification for one of the world's most popular games, Minecraft. With an increasing population requiring larger infrastructure and new technologies demanding larger quantities of a wider array of minerals, our society is increasingly reliant on minerals and metals. All these materials have one thing in common – geology. To help raise awareness about these needed raw materials and geology, B...
While rising gold prices are dominating the headlines, silver is quietly experiencing its own explosion in demand. The growing appetite for the lustrous, white metal stems in part from its use in components needed in rapidly evolving technologies, led by the voracious appetite of fifth generation (5G) telecommunications and related electronic applications and systems. But silver, long valued for its beauty and rarity, has been around for millennia. Other than in currency and a...
What if a mining company could find out how much gold is in a sample by simply crushing it, putting it in a jar and zapping it with x-ray? Chrysos Corp.'s PhotonAssay is able to do just that. Hitting samples with high-energy X-rays, Chrysos PhotonAssay causes excitation of atomic nuclei allowing enhanced analysis of gold, silver, and complementary elements in as little as two minutes. This provides the ability to carry out mine site and laboratory assays without the need for...
GoldSpot Discoveries Corp. Aug. 11 said it has been hired to apply its artificial intelligence driven mineral exploration expertise to identify new targets on AEX Gold Inc.'s large portfolio of high-grade gold properties in southern Greenland. "We are delighted to be partnering with GoldSpot in this venture, a company with a stellar reputation and a wealth of experience in helping mining companies identify new exploration targets," said AEX Gold Executive Vice President and...
BMW Group has secured a deal for 100 million euros worth of the sustainably sourced cobalt needed for the lithium-ion batteries that are powering its expanding line-up of electric vehicles. This important but oft-controversial battery metal will be acquired from Managem Group, a Moroccan mining company that produces cobalt, copper, fluorite, gold, silver, and zinc at its seven mines in Morocco and one in Sudan. The agreement with Managem will provide BMW with about 20% of its...
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...
White Gold Corp. is adding artificial intelligence to the exploration toolbox at its disposal as the innovative company unlocks the massive gold potential of its namesake district in the heart of Canada's Yukon Territory. White Gold already employs a systematic exploration strategy that combines traditional mineral exploration techniques such as soil sampling and good old-fashioned prospecting with state-of-the-art technologies such as the use of drones for lidar mapping and...
As the cultural and economic shift towards renewable energy continues to develop, the pursuit for new renewable technologies is emerging as well. Some believe these pursuits should include revisiting a bygone, yet controversial, energy source to combat the encroaching climate issue. Nuclear energy, a hot button issue due to our sordid history with the technology, but a discussion regarding the viability of nuclear energy may soon be approaching. For almost a hundred years the...
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...
Hardrock mining companies have long been envious of their oil and gas counterparts' ability to drill a hole into the ground and extract liquid minerals. Group 11 Technologies Inc., a US-based technology firm, aims to provide miners with a way to pump gold and other metals out of the ground. Group 11 is a planned partnership between Golden Predator Mining Corp., EnviroLeach Technologies Inc. and enCore Energy Corp. that will use EnviroLeach's proprietary formula, which...
Reminiscent of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a small submersible scours the inky depths of the ocean, not in search of seams of coal, but towering spires created by thermal vents. The remotely operated sub's lights splash across the cluster of vents that spew mineral rich plumes of super-heated water from deep in the earth into the chill of the ocean depths. The ROV moves into position, its clawed arm reaching out and breaking off a sample of mineral rich rock...
American mines produced roughly 26,000 tons of rare earth during 2019, a 44 percent increase over 2018, yet the United States is 100 percent reliant on foreign countries for its supply of these 17 elements vital to our modern high-tech society. This apparent paradox speaks to the complexities of these enigmatic metals. The irony of rare earth elements (REEs) begins with their name, which is at the same time a misnomer and accurate descriptor. "All the REEs except promethium...
Artificial intelligence and real boots-on-the ground geological investigations have resulted in a significant new high-grade gold discovery at New Found Gold Corp.'s Queensway project in Newfoundland. Formerly known as the Linear project, Queensway is a massive land package covering at least 17 known high-grade gold showings along a roughly 55-mile- (88 kilometers) stretch of the Central Newfoundland Gold Belt. To help identify the best drill targets across this roughly...
High-speed networking and interconnected devices, which form a unified whole, are opening a new realm of possibilities for consumer and company alike. As the world continues to become more digitally interconnected, the value of companies and their success can almost be directly linked to how quickly they adapt and utilize newer technologies. We can see remnants of bygone eras still lingering in many industries, including mining, in an era where the speed of development of new...
Rare earth elements in Canada have recaptured the spotlight now that the United States has entered a new alliance with its northern neighbor to develop robust supply chains for critical minerals needed for important manufacturing sectors, including communication technology, aerospace and defense, and clean technology. A final agreement between the two countries, reported in December, delivers on a commitment made by their leaders in June to advance joint initiatives to...
In recent years, Teck Resources Ltd. has been working with healthcare officials around the world to bring copper to the frontlines in the urgent fight against bacteria and viruses harmful to the human body. Now Teck, one of the world's top copper producers, has joined the battle underway to curb the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic by moving outside the healthcare field with a new pilot project in Vancouver that is using the red metal's formidable antimicrobial...
The adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy is driving increased demand for graphite, a major ingredient in lithium-ion batteries. Graphite, however, is high on a list of 35 critical minerals and metals not mined in the United States. Graphite One Inc. would like to shift America's reliance on foreign countries such as China for its graphite needs by developing a mine at Graphite Creek, a world-class deposit of graphite with some properties that make it uniquely...
Solar accounted for nearly 40% of the new electricity generating capacity added in the United States during 2019. With sun-fueled electricity expected to continue growing with more residents installing panels on their roofs and utilities commissioning large solar electricity generating facilities, a group of metals that typically lurk in the shadows are now seeing the light of day. Many of the metals needed to build out America's solar generating capacity are fairly common...
