The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Critical minerals can be recycled from decades of e-waste The necessity of reclaiming waste as a means to curb the seemingly impossible material requirements of a renewable future is fostering a different kind of industry – urban mining. "When you're in the renewable energy space, you've got to think through the whole lifecycle – where will EV and lithium-ion batteries go when they are no longer useful? It can't be to a landfill. That's not responsible," said Graphite One Pres... Full story
COVID-19 may have served as an inflection point for metal 3D printing. After suffering a short-term downturn in the wake of the pandemic, the global metal additive manufacturing market is expected to grow to US$18.5 billion by 2032, according to business research firm IDTechEx. The United Kingdom-based market analyst says several factors have come into play to push this burgeoning technology to the foreground, most notably the supply chain disruption caused by the pandemic its... Full story
Seeing a win-win-win situation that revitalizes an old Superfund site, creates jobs for New Yorkers, and supercharges a cutting-edge renewable energy storage technology, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, picked up the phone and called Zinc8 Energy Solutions CEO Ron MacDonald to urge the energy-storage technology company to manufacture zinc-air batteries in his home state. During this pivotal call to MacDonald, Sen. Schumer touted the cleaned up and refurbished... Full story
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... Full story
Encouraged by the support it has received from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, along with the clean energy battery tax credits offered up in the Inflation Reduction Act, Zinc8 Energy Solutions Inc. has decided to move forward with building its first commercial zinc-air battery production facility in New York. "It is abundantly clear that with the introduction of the IRA, US policymakers, led by Senator Schumer, are taking real action by introducing incentives... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
Flow batteries a major potential future use of alloying metal Vanadium, a metal best known for its role in making extremely tough steel used in tools and auto parts, is emerging as a metal that could allay shortages of lithium, nickel, and other ingredients needed for the batteries powering electric vehicles. While vanadium flow batteries will not be powering EVs anytime soon, this technology could diversify energy storage by serving as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries... Full story
A blue-collar metal that is vital to weatherizing envisioned green energy future Critical minerals are typically thought of as obscure rare earth elements cloaked in geopolitical intrigue, or exciting metals and metalloids that have risen to stardom due to the special properties they bring to cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing, smartphones, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. Zinc – a blue-collar metal better known for galvanizing guardrails, light p... Full story
Magnet rare earths transform motion to energy; and energy to motion and music While all 15 of the rare earths have special properties that have been called magical, alchemistical, and futuristic, seven of these elements are imbued with a powerful magnetism that is hard to resist when it comes to creating a high-tech future powered by clean energy. The magnetic qualities of these rare earths – praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and holmium – are... Full story
By 2030, batteries will likely need more than 5x all the graphite mined in 2021 While shortages of the lithium and nickel needed for electric vehicle batteries has dominated news headlines over the past year, the massive demand for graphite has largely been overlooked. As the primary ingredient in the anode side of lithium-ion batteries, graphite is the single largest element in lithium-ion batteries and the mining sector's inability to keep pace with skyrocketing demand of... Full story
Coal ash, acid drainage, and tailings for future green economy As the world continues to prime itself for the global energy shift, academia, governments and the private sector are scrambling to extract the valuable minerals and metals necessary to power the low-carbon renewable future – resulting in some truly innovative and unconventional methods. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list often miss... Full story
The University of Adelaide launches Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Resources The global transition to electric vehicles plugged into low-carbon-emissions power sources is requiring enormous quantities of lithium-ion battery materials, copper, rare earths, and a long list of other mined commodities. This creates a dual challenge for mining companies – ramping up production quickly enough to supply the materials to build the envisioned clean energy future while also m...
A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed by the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, little over a year since the lab successfully achieved 1.3 megajoules of energy for a fraction of a second. After a year of painstaking work, the NIF has published its work in three peer-review papers. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars. Heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse...
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... Full story
Fleet Space launches avant-garde satellite geophysics tech As many space exploration companies begin to investigate the vast mineral potential of asteroids, moons, and planets within our solar system, Fleet Space Technologies is leveraging the vantage of space to explore Earth for the $13 trillion worth of minerals and metals that are estimated to be needed over the next two decades to build the clean energy future. To accomplish this, Fleet's ExoSphere system utilizes a... Full story
Vital Metals Ltd. has received an AU$45 million (US$31.6 million) infusion of cash to fund its expanding rare earths business in Canada. "Vital Metals is on the threshold of becoming North America's only company capable of producing a refined rare earth product from its own mine, completing our transition from exploration and development to production and operations," said Vital Metals Managing Director Geoff Atkins. "This is an important milestone, not only in the development...
Toward the goal of producing zero-carbon copper at its McIlvenna Bay mine project in Saskatchewan, Canada, Foran Mining Corp. has ordered a fleet of 20 battery-electric underground mine trucks, loaders, drills, and other equipment from Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions. This US$32.4 million (330 million Swedish kronor) deal marks the largest single sale of Sandvik's growing line of electric mining equipment. "This record contract is the culmination of a year-long...
Ask anyone, "who invented the lightbulb?" and most would be able to answer Thomas Edison. Ask anyone, "who invented the telephone?" and some would be able to answer Alexander Graham Bell. Ask anyone, "who invented the lithium-ion battery powering your smartphone and laptop?" and perhaps scant few would be able to answer John Goodenough. Along with his colleagues Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, Goodenough was jointly bestowed the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the... Full story
Looking to secure the materials required for the lithium batteries that will deliver power to more than 2 million electric vehicles per year by 2026, Ford Motor Company is adding the clout of its Blue Oval emblem to mining companies and projects that can offer low-carbon supplies of the aluminum, battery materials, and copper needed to build its envisioned e-mobility future. "Ford's new electric vehicle lineup has generated huge enthusiasm and demand, and now we are putting...
To bolster supplies of the lithium-ion battery materials needed for America's transition to electric vehicles, the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office is loaning Syrah Resources Ltd. $102.1 million to expand Vidalia, a processing facility in Louisiana that upgrades mined graphite into a material needed in the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and modern electronics. "Securing critical materials, such as lithium and graphite, is essential to...
Following the positive results from an independent technical review received early this year, Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has decided to expand the rare earths separation capacity of its RapidSX demonstration plant to include stages that will produce the rare earths for the powerful magnets that go into electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, computer hard drives, and a long list of other modern devices. Developed by Innovation Metals Corp., a subsidiary of Ucore, RapidSX is...
Dragonbridge executes online attack on US rare earth interests Dragonbridge, a cybernetwork that pushes online narratives in support of the People's Republic of China's political interests, has launched a campaign targeting companies advancing rare earths mining and processing projects in the United States and Canada. Mandiant, a globally recognized leader in cybersecurity, first began investigating Dragonbridge's incursion into the North American rare earths space when it... Full story
To help ensure it has reliable and plentiful supplies of the minerals and metals essential to the high-tech and green energy future, the United Kingdom has announced the launch of its Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre in Nottingham, England. Critical minerals are essential for the manufacturing of smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, fighter jets, and an enormous array of other products essential to the UK's economy and national security. With the global...
As it advances the development of a lithium-ion battery materials park centered on its cobalt refinery in Ontario, Electra Battery Materials Corp. is considering the potential of building a second similar facility in a battery materials park being developed near the town of Becancour in the neighboring province of Quebec. "Given a forecasted deficit in domestic cobalt sulfate production by 2025, we have received significant interest from industry and government stakeholders...
