The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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First Cobalt Corp. Sept. 3 announced the completion of a US$45 million financing that will help fund the upgrade and expansion of its battery-grade cobalt sulfate refinery in Canada. "With the completion of this financing, the First Cobalt project team can now accelerate long lead equipment orders for our Canadian battery materials refinery as we pursue our vision of becoming the most sustainable producer of battery materials," said Trent Mell, president and CEO of First...
Research and technology firm IDTechEx has recently released a detailed report projecting the future of solid-state batteries and its potential to reach a market size of over $8 billion by 2031. Commercialized in 1991, the lithium-ion battery quickly became the mainstay for portable energy needs, and as electronics have continued to shrink, the need for mobility has only managed to grow. However, their worldwide success and diffusion in consumer electronics and now electric veh...
The United States' withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan opened the door for China to swoop in and lay claim to the more than $1 trillion worth of lithium, rare earths, and other metals and gems estimated to lie below a landscape marked by more than 40 years of continuous war. Digging up the rich natural resources in Afghanistan will not be easy and it is not likely that China will consider the now Taliban-run country as a dependable source of critical minerals and metals in t...
U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has licensed its wireless charging technology – a technology that could one day enable electric vehicles to be charged as they are driven at highway speeds – to Brooklyn-based HEVO to continue development of this groundbreaking system. Founded in 2011, HEVO has long been in the process of seeking ways to eliminate global reliance on fossil fuels. Built upon the values inherent to its name – honest, empathy, value...
Britishvolt, Oxford University, and five other United Kingdom-based universities, private sector, and government organizations have joined forces to develop world-leading solid-state lithium battery technology for the automotive industry. "Collaboration between industry, government and our world-leading academic institutions is putting the UK at the forefront of global efforts to develop innovative automotive technologies, such as solid-state batteries," said UK Minister for I...
While ramping up construction of a lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility capable of producing enough cells each year to power 300,000 electric vehicles, Britishvolt has forged a strategic partnership with Glencore, the world's largest producer of the cobalt used in most electric vehicle batteries. "Cobalt is a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries and knowing that we are being supplied with ethically produced, low-carbon cobalt is a signal to the market that we are...
Experts from the University of Adelaide are leading a project focused on helping Australia's mining sector transition to more efficient and sustainable battery electric vehicles. "About 30-50% of the total mine site energy usage is related to diesel-powered mining vehicles," said Ali Pourmousavi Kani, a lecturer at University of Adelaide's School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. "This represents a significant proportion of current mining operational costs, and the...
In the depths of its test mine and lab in Tampere, Finland, Sandvik has secretly been carrying out underground tests on a cabinless, electrified, and automated concept loader that showcases the Swedish company's vision for the future of mining equipment. Clandestinely developed in a facility dubbed Area 52, this concept loader is equipped with Sandvik's Automine, an automation solution that allows the cutting-edge mining machine to navigate through the rough and changing... Full story
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... Full story
Roughly 38,000 metric tons of rare earth concentrates were produced from American soil during 2020, yet the United States remains 100% reliant on foreign countries for its supply of these 17 elements critical to our modern high-tech society – an apparent paradox that 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 p... Full story
While the history of human innovation is a series of discoveries, each building on the last, there are certain "eureka moments" that mark a shift in the trajectory of mankind – taming fire, stone toolmaking, Bronze Age metalworking, the printing press, and harnessing electricity to name a few. The history books may one day reflect on these opening decades of the 21st century as one of those rare occasions that human innovation makes a leap that necessitates a new chapter be w... Full story
Global governments and industries are setting increasingly ambitious targets for the phasing out of fossil fuel-burning automobiles in favor of electric vehicles charged with green energy. Achieving these grand climate objectives, however, is going to require an equally bold strategy to ensure there are plentiful supplies of the new generation of energy minerals and metals critical to building this revolution in the way the world generates and uses energy. The World Bank... Full story
The global transition to electric vehicles plugged into renewable energy sources is powering enormous demand for graphite, the single largest ingredient in lithium-ion batteries. "Graphite demand increases in both absolute and percentage terms since graphite is needed to build the anodes found in the most commonly deployed automotive, grid, and decentralized batteries," the World Bank penned in a 2020 report, "The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition." According... Full story
From the transistors in quantum computers that are millions of times faster than their classical counterparts to fiber optic cables that send data at the speed of light, germanium is a little-known semiconductor that is a small but extremely important ingredient in the technologies behind the future of ultrafast computing and communications. Germanium traces its technological roots back to the 1950s, when scientists developed the transistor to replace vacuum tubes in the... Full story
"Please mine more nickel," these four words from Tesla CEO Elon Musk reverberated across the global mining sector and raised awareness of how fundamental nickel is to the lithium-ion batteries powering hundreds of millions of electric vehicles to come off Tesla and traditional automaker assembly lines over the next two decades. "Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way," Musk implored... Full story
The lightest of all the metals in the universe, lithium has emerged as the namesake for the batteries powering electric vehicles down global highways and storing renewable energy for those EVs to plug into. This is on top of the countless laptops, tablets, smartphones, wearable electronics, power tools, household appliances, electric bikes, scooters, toys, and the seemingly endless list of electric devices made possible by lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium consumption for... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
Typically thought of as a precious metal used to make coins, jewelry, tableware, and other glimmery objects, silver's true value lies in more industrious properties that make it invaluable to high-tech applications such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G networks. Roughly 28% of the 8,000 metric tons (257.2 million ounces) of silver used in the United States during 2020 went into electrical and electronics devices; 26% into jewelry and silverware; 19% for coins and... Full story
An unsung war hero that saved countless American troops during World War II, an overlooked battery material that has played a pivotal role in storing electricity for more than 100 years, and a major ingredient in futuristic grid-scale energy storage, antimony is among the most important critical metalloids that most people have never heard of. While antimony may not be part of the common lexicon, humans have been using this semi-metal for more than 5,000 years. "For example,... Full story
Reminiscent of America's gilded age, the world is priming itself for a new era of technology and energy centered on the electricity that sparked the imaginations of visionaries such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. This new era, however, sets aside more than a century of burning fossil fuels in favor of new clean sources of the electricity that will power human innovation into the 21st century and beyond. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are but a few of the methods... Full story
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... Full story
A heavy reliance on imports for a long list of minerals and metals critical to American supply chains could be a stumbling block for the Biden administration's ambitious "Build Back Better" agenda. "From the largest infrastructure plan since the Eisenhower interstate highway system, to an aggressive plan for a national energy transition, the Biden administration's agenda will require an immense amount of minerals," National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan... Full story
Canada is positioning itself as the "global supplier of choice" for the critical minerals and metals essential to tomorrow's technologies, especially the almost unfathomable quantities of raw materials that will be required by a world transitioning to low-carbon energy and electric vehicles. "Demand for minerals and metals continues to grow with an increasing focus on critical minerals – vital in aerospace, healthcare, telecommunications and an array of clean technologies such... Full story
Global mining company Rio Tinto Group and heavy equipment manufacturer Komatsu Ltd. have partnered to fast-track the development and implementation of zero-emission mining haulage solutions, with Rio offering a mine site for testing and Komatsu allowing first picks from its future lineup of power-agnostic trucks. "Rio Tinto and Komatsu have a shared history of partnership on innovation going back to when we built the world's largest Komatsu autonomous haulage fleet in 2008,"... Full story
