Critical Minerals

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Example companies sourced from this article.

Site Identification & Exploration:

• GeologicAI builds high-end core scanning solutions which include sensors, Digital Core Table, and modelling capabilities. Their AI-powered tools allow geologists access to accurate, high-quality data, streamlining workflows and making the process of analyzing and interpreting more time-efficient and accessible.
• KoBold Metals is a pioneering mineral exploration company using AI to expedite the discovery of critical electric vehicle battery minerals like lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel. Today, the mineral exploration industry is spending more money to make fewer discoveries. This is because ore deposits at or near-surface level have been largely discovered. The remaining ore deposits are deeper underground and harder to see from the surface. Discovering new, ethically sourced deposits of critical battery minerals requires the ability to peer into the Earth’s subsurface in innovative ways. KoBold designed its technology to pick up faint signals in the data pointing to hidden ore deposits below.

Extraction:

• Electroflow Technologies is developing a proprietary electrochemical process that uses lithium-selective electrodes to convert saltwater brines into lithium chemicals for batteries. Their process is well suited for abundant brines with low lithium content, eliminates the need for excessive chemical reagents, and offers high scalability with a modular cell stack design.
• I-ROX technology delivers short, high-intensity bursts of energy using pulsed-power technology that more efficiently shatters mineral ore. This process, which targets tensile weakness in rocks, could substantially reduce the cost, energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions generated by critical mineral extraction activities.
• Lilac Solutions is commercialising a high-performance, low-cost ion-exchange-based approach to extracting lithium from brines (referred to as direct lithium extraction or DLE) without the need for traditional evaporation ponds to supply the rapidly growing lithium-ion battery market and enable the EV revolution.
• Olokun Minerals is developing a mineral recovery process that includes a separation step, leveraging a novel resin to recover minerals from salty wastewaters with a reduced chemical footprint. This process produces cleaner water that can be reclaimed while creating metal salts that can then be converted into compounds used for batteries.
• Skeleton Technologies is developing a high-powered SuperBattery that can be used to decarbonize heavy-duty vehicles at mining sites, for which lithium-ion batteries are not ideally suited, due to longer charging times and, fewer life cycles, and inadequate amounts of power delivered.

Refining & Processing:

• Mangrove Lithium refines battery-grade lithium from diverse raw sources, enabling less waste and fewer chemicals to create more sustainable refining processes. Additionally, they are developing an electrochemical technology to produce high-purity battery-grade lithium hydroxide (LiOH) at the lowest cost.

Recycling:

• ChemFinity Technologies creates specialised sorbents and membranes. Their materials withstand harsh hydrometallurgical conditions and can be tuned to selectively recover over a dozen critical metals (such as platinum group metals) from waste feedstocks.
• MagREEsource develops a clean, proprietary recycling process based on hydrogenation dedicated to the production of secondary rare earth magnets while reshoring the manufacturing of permanent magnets.
• Mecaware is a strategic raw material producer who operates from two waste streams using breakthrough innovation in chemistry based on synergistic CO2 capture and critical metal recycling (mostly end of life batteries and scrap).
• Redwood Materials recycles, refines, and remanufactures battery materials in the US, localising supply chains to drive down the environmental footprint and cost of lithium-ion batteries.
• Sortera Technologies is using state-of-the-art A.I., data analytics, and advanced sensors to advance the circular economy by making end-of-life and pre-consumer wastes recyclable.

Substitution:

• Naco Technologies is developing a nano-coating technology which increases efficiency and lifetime of critical components in electrolysers and fuel cells and replaces the need for iridium and platinum.
• Molten Industries is pioneering a process that produces synthetic graphite for lithium-ion batteries that is cost competitive with natural graphite and avoids carbon emissions. Their process cracks methane into hydrogen and graphite using renewable electricity.
• UpCatalyst focuses on turning flue-gas CO2 from heavy industry and biomass into valuable synthetic graphite, much needed to produce anodes for EV batteries.

Deep sea mining

Covered in the August 7/27/23 episode of Catalyst with Shayle Kahn