Episode 128 | Efficient Extraction | Nth Cycle
A clean energy transition is going to require resources—a LOT of them. Just take lithium-ion batteries. About 0.45% of all cars on American roads are electric. EVs and wind turbines also require rare-earth metals for their motors. Regardless, mining and recycling needs to become much more efficient and sustainable.
Massachusetts-based Nth Cycle believes they have a solution that can address issues on both fronts. The issue is the effectiveness of the sorting process of these minerals. In mining, the biggest issue is richness of the ores and the cost to transport them to market. For electronics recycling, the industry-standard pyrometallurgical process is energy-intensive.
Nth Cycle believes their solution is energy-efficient and mobile enough to make mineral extraction far more widespread. They have adopted an “electro-extraction” technology that relies on a modified filter press and acids to extract metals like cobalt and nickel.
“You can think of it as an electrified Brita filter,” explains Co-founder & CEO Megan O’Connor. “By applying those different electrical currents across that filter surface, we can pull different metals out into products that can be sold directly back into the battery supply chain.”
As an alternative to pyrometallurgical extraction, Megan says they can reduce energy costs 60%, and overall costs by 75%. Their process also doesn’t require a billion-dollar facility, which Megan says are mostly found in Asia and northern Canada in North America.
On the mining side, this could open up North America as a domestic producer of cobalt and nickel. Nth Cycle can accomplish this by extracting minerals from tailing ponds, which could contain as much as 30% of the value of a mine. Many mines have short lifespans. The mobility of Nth Cycle’s equipment can follow.
For recycling, Megan believes technologies like electro-extraction could lead to a much more circular system. She says Nth Cycle’s name come from the mission “to create a world where all the critical minerals that we need for this energy transition and beyond are already in circulation.”
Megan calls recycling of electronics “urban mining.” Whereas rock from conventional mining can contain 1% metal, a standard lithium battery could be 20-30%.
“We’re really trying to untap a lot of the resources we have here in a much more sustainable and economic way,” she says.
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