Startup develops process to get rare materials
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2024-12-12
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Startup develops process to get rare materials from toxic mining waste: 'Critical materials for the next generation'
One man's trash is another man's treasure.Startup Phoenix Tailings is driving that lesson home as it harvests rare-earth metals and nickel from some of the 1.8 billion tons of mining waste generated in the U.S. each year.MIT News profiled the company providing an answer to China's dominance in processing rare-earth elements.China's 60% share of that domain is especially problematic, as demand surges for metals like neodymium and dysprosium used in fast-growing clean energy applications. That includes the magnets used in electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines.The Biden administration has gone as far as saying an overreliance on foreign nations for those materials "posed national and economic security threats."The positive is that these rare-earth metals are abundant in the U.S. The negative? They're buried in the aforementioned toxic mining waste.Fortunately, Phoenix Tailings' founding team of four developed a first-of-its-kind method that can extract the rare-earth metals without carbon pollution or toxic waste. The method does use electricity, which the team says it offsets with clean energy contracts.The process uses a heated molten salt mixture on mining waste rich in rare earth elements at temperatures of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Once they apply an electrical current, a remarkably pure metal is extracted with almost no waste, per the company."Being able to make your own materials domestically means that you're not at the behest of a foreign monopoly," one of the company's founders, Tomás Villalón, told MIT News."We're focused on creating critical materials for the next generation of technologies," Villalón added while touting the team's "sustainable" approach to harvesting the rare materials.The company has customers using its metals in wind turbines, EVs, and defense applications. Phoenix Tailings says it expects to harvest more than 3,000 tons of rare-earth metals by 2026, which MIT News noted represents roughly 7% of current domestic production.Their novel solution addresses a major concern for many of the metals playing a key role in green tech.China's dominance is worrisome for many other countries, and it's why companies are scouring the world for alternative sources in areas like Australia and California. Mining these materials with less collateral damage is another worthy goal being chased.Phoenix Tailings is also turning its attention outward with the aid of two grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. One is for extracting two metals, nickel and magnesium, that are key to the batteries used in EVs and clean energy storage. Another is for producing iron from mining waste.Villalón said that refining metals has to take place domestically and that the team wants to deploy its "knowledge from processing the rare earth metals and slowly move it into other segments."He posed a big question that his team evidently always keeps top-of-mind: "How do we create approaches that are economical and environmentally compliant not just now, but 30 years from now?"
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