Hydrometallurgical Production of Domestic Metals for Energy Transition

Columbia University (Columbia) will use innovative processes to enable increased domestic production of energy-relevant metals from CO2-reactive minerals at potentially lower costs than the state of the art. The work will focus on feedstocks from the Tamarack Project, leading to domestic production of nickel, copper, and cobalt and smaller amounts of platinum, palladium, and gold. Activities will leverage Columbia's hydrometallurgical leach technologies for these minerals. The technology has significantly lower environmental impacts and may enable economic recovery of off-specification concentrates that are not accepted for smelting. This ex-situ processing will have no impact on the CO2-reactive capacities of waste rock and may improve the capacity of tailings for carbonation. Columbia will explore the application to other mineral processing opportunities.