Rocks Reads Roundup, 9/4
Hello rocks readers! This week's links include a lot of non-mining metals recovery and recycling stories, which wasn't a deliberate choice but is kind of the closest we get to hopeful on this newsletter sometimes?
I’m not sure what next week’s longer addition is going to be about–maybe getting a little more into the US critical minerals strategy and discourse, sort of a “how did we get here” overview to explain some of the players and priorities involved? Maybe more lithium stuff? Open to suggestions. Have a good weekend and take care.
(This technically came out last week but it was after I sent out the Friday links so) The Wall Street Journal published a profile of former Tesla CTO JB Straubel and his new battery recycling venture, Redwood Materials. I'm really curious whether or how creating more effective car battery recycling technologies could support or underwrite consumer electronics recycling. For years, the line on e-waste has been that the economic model for electronics recycling just doesn't work. As devices get smaller, extraction gets more time-consuming and with increased component miniaturization, recycling companies are getting less and less value from what metal they can recover (although notably, Redwood Materials is refining their battery recycling process through recycling consumer electronics). Recycling car batteries at scale fills a massive need and companies will definitely pay for those materials. If Redwood can get it right, they could potentially make a less-profitable recycling niche more viable with the resources afforded by its primary more profitable niche.
Researchers at NTU Singapore published a paper in Environmental Science and Technology detailing a process to use orange peel waste in lithium battery recycling. Basically, this method created a citric acid to leach metals from a ground-up battery sludge referred to as "Black Mass" (which, for readers from last week, is probably also the name of a villain in the same comic book universe Crystal X. Boring comes from). I need to spend more time in the guts of the paper to really get what they're doing, but it's a cool idea.
The Department of Energy is apparently still funding research into rare earth extraction from coal ash, and one potential applicant recently sought the blessing of New Mexico's San Juan county. A lot of the preliminary research into rare earth coal extraction began in Appalachia–and when I spoke on background last year with some of the people involved in that research, it was really interesting to hear how earnestly they talked about their work in relation to the collapsing coal mining industry and trying to deal with its toxic impacts on the region (as opposed to my read of this work which was basically trying to greenwash coal). It makes sense that a region as poor as northwest New Mexico would be interested in something like this as a potential revenue source. I'm very intrigued by the fact one of the partners on the DOE proposal is Naat'áanii Development Corporation, a federally chartered business development organization created to support the Navajo nation.
Older story but interesting for context: Penn State, which was an early recipient of DOE funding for rare earth coal extraction, has been using carbon mineralization in experiments to extract rare earths from coal acid mine drainage. Carbon mineralization is an extremely interesting emerging (and, full caveat, not without its challenges) carbon capture technology that basically turns CO2 into rocks (here is a recent long piece that gets more into it). In the Penn State research, the rare earths attach to the carbonite rock formed in the process I guess? I'm super curious about the potential for basically carbon negative mineral recovery here.
(Seriously, I have been trying to get someone to greenlight 5,000 words of prestige publication journalism on rare earths and coal research for three years at this point? Help!)
Our one not-recycling or alternative sourcing story for this newsletter : The Center for Biological Diversity has filed an SEC complaint against an Australian junior mining firm trying to set up a lithium operation in Nevada over misleading statements from the company. Ioneer (I'm going to have to do a newsletter just compiling all the dumbass mining company names at some point, aren't I) is developing a lithium mining project called Rhyolite Ridge on federal land working with the Bureau of Land Management. The project came under scrutiny earlier this year, also thanks to work by the Center for Biological Diversity, and the SEC complaint seems to be a tactic to put some sand in the mining operation's gears. Essentially, the timeline that Ioneer recently put forward to its investors doesn't line up with the permitting timeline at the BLM–which is to say the mine won't be operating when the company claims it will be, which means it won't be making investors money when the company claims it will be. I don't actually know if a complaint like this will result in an SEC fine and whether that fine would seriously threaten Ioneer or merely inconvenience them. Honestly though, if it is just a move to cause petty problems for the mining company it's a fucking genius one and I love it? Like the Center for Biological Diversity does not want this mine to exist! Going to the SEC like "the mine is misleading investors, think of the investorssssss" is such a like, wacky workplace comedy move. (Except the workplace is the planet I guess.) Anyway, they’re trying to save an endangered plant that only grows in the area of the proposed mine.