Potential US innovation in recycling electronic waste, combined with refining and processing, will allow the US to leapfrog China in critical minerals, an official at the Department of Energy said on Monday amid Washington’s aggressive attempts to counter China’s dominance in the industry.
Recycling metals, materials and magnets within the US is one of the fastest ways the country can impact the critical minerals supply chain, and entrepreneurs across the US are “pioneering” new techniques that allow for more efficient and effective processing, Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
“New technology in this space will be a game changer … I think you will see significant gains in the output from recycled black mass and material in the coming 12 months,” Robertson said. Black mass is the powdery residue from lithium-ion batteries that contain valuable critical minerals.
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Robertson, appointed in October last year as the head of the Department of Energy’s newly formed Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, also touted US progress in critical minerals refining and processing.
“Our labs right now are working along with corporate partners on technologies that will enable the processing of multiple types of critical minerals within the same flow sheet. That would be game-changing,” she said, adding that the process is currently “heavily intensive”, where it’s difficult to switch from processing one type of ore body to another.
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What are rare earths, and why is China’s dominance facing global pushback
What are rare earths, and why is China’s dominance facing global pushback
Successfully reducing the US’s dependence on China for critical minerals would be a daunting task, though. Nathan Ratledge, founder and CEO of Alta Resource Technologies, a Boulder, Colorado-based firm specialising in mineral separation technologies, said at Monday’s CFR event that the problem was “worse than you think” as the US tries to “undo 30 years of strategic monopolisation in 24 months”.
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