Critical Materials is commercializing Sandia National Laboratories technology that utilizes CO2, water, and an environmentally friendly complexing agent to efficiently mine strategic metals, including rare earth elements, from coal ash waste without the environmentally harmful chemicals used in current mining methods.
“We started Critical Materials in New Mexico to forge a close working partnership with the Sandia inventors of the technology we licensed. TRGR is helping us to advance this technology toward commercialization.”
Robert Happeny
CEO
Critical Materials LLC
In this TRGR Project, Sandia scientists partnered with the company’s staff to optimize the technology, minimizing extraction time and water usage. In the course of testing the process on samples of coal ash from various sources in New Mexico, they determined which sources offer the best economic opportunity based on their critical metal concentrations and leaching efficiency. In the course of this Project, the technology has been evaluated on larger samples, kilograms vs. grams of material, advancing it to a TRL of 5, ready for demonstration in a relevant environment.
In the past year, the company and researchers also realized that in addition to extracting strategic metals from coal ash, the technology could be used to extract minerals from ore, making mining a cleaner process. They are now talking to an interested mine owner about how it might be used to extract cobalt and nickel in Missouri.
The results of this TRGR Project helped move the company closer to its goal of lessening U.S. reliance on overseas sources for essential strategic metals, and creating an economically viable resource. Sandia researchers are now evaluating the technology on tailings provided by a large mining company. Knowing that there are multiple applications for the technology also makes the company more appealing to investors and potential customers.