CRITICAL MINERALSStartup Turns Mining Waste into Critical Metals for the U.S.
At the heart of the energy transition is a metal transition. Wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars require more exotic metals with unique properties, known as rare earth elements. Phoenix Tailings is creating domestic supply chains for rare earth metals, key to the clean energy transition.
At the heart of the energy transition is a metal transition. Wind farms, solar panels, and electric cars require many times more copper, zinc, and nickel than their gas-powered alternatives. They also require more exotic metals with unique properties, known as rare earth elements, which are essential for the magnets that go into things like wind turbines and EV motors.
Today, China dominates the processing of rare earth elements, refining around 60 percent of those materials for the world. With demand for such materials forecasted to skyrocket, the Biden administration has said the situation poses national and economic security threats.
Substantial quantities of rare earth metals are sitting unused in the United States and many other parts of the world today. The catch is they’re mixed with vast quantities of toxic mining waste.
Phoenix Tailings is scaling up a process for harvesting materials, including rare earth metals and nickel, from mining waste. The company uses water and recyclable solvents to collect oxidized metal, then puts the metal into a heated molten salt mixture and applies electricity.
The company, co-founded by MIT alumni, says its pilot production facility in Woburn, Massachusetts, is the only site in the world producing rare earth metals without toxic byproducts or carbon emissions. The process does use electricity, but Phoenix Tailings currently offsets that with renewable energy contracts.
The company expects to produce more than 3,000 tons of the metals by 2026, which would have represented about 7 percent of total U.S. production last year.
Now, with support from the Department of Energy, Phoenix Tailings is expanding the list of metals it can produce and accelerating plans to build a second production facility.
For the founding team, including MIT graduates Tomás Villalón ’14 and Michelle Chao ’14 along with Nick Myers and Anthony Balladon, the work has implications for geopolitics and the planet.
“Being able to make your own materials domestically means that you’re not at the behest of a foreign monopoly,” Villalón says. “We’re focused on creating critical materials for the next generation of technologies. More broadly, we want to get these materials in ways that are sustainable in the long term.”
