CMI Team member Phoenix Tailings started as a CMI Affiliate. In this article with MIT News, the company co-founder describes the company beginning as a student.
Phoenix Tailings, co-founded by MIT alumni, 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.
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.
See the full story: Startup turns mining waste into critical metals for the U.S.