#critical metals

[cognitivejustice]

To build all of the solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies necessary to fight climate change, we’re going to need a lot more metals. Mining those metals from the Earth creates damage and pollution that threaten ecosystems and communities. But there’s another potential source of the copper, nickel, aluminum, and rare-earth minerals needed to stabilize the climate: the mountain of electronic waste humanity discards each year. 

Exactly how much of each clean energy metal is there in the laptops, printers, and smart fridges the world discards? Until recently, no one really knew. Data on more obscure metals like neodymium and palladium, which play small but critical roles in established and emerging green energy technologies, has been especially hard to come by.

Now, the United Nations has taken a first step toward filling in these data gaps with the latest installment of its periodic report on e-waste around the world. Released last month, the new Global E-Waste Monitor shows the staggering scale of the e-waste crisis, which reached a new record in 2022 when the world threw out 62 million metric tons of electronics. And for the first time, the report includes a detailed breakdown of the metals present in our electronic garbage, and how often they are being recycled.

“There is very little reporting on the recovery of metals [from e-waste] globally,” lead report author Kees Baldé told Grist. “We felt it was our duty to get more facts on the table.”

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Yale Environment 360:

Can metals that naturally occur in seawater be mined, and can they be mined sustainably? A company in Oakland, California, says yes. And not only is it extracting magnesium from ocean water — and from waste brine generated by industry — it is doing it in a carbon-neutral way. Magrathea Metals has produced small amounts of magnesium in pilot projects, and with financial support from the U.S. Defense Department, it is building a larger-scale facility to produce hundreds of tons of the metal over two to four years. By 2028, it says it plans to be operating a facility that will annually produce more than 10,000 tons.

Magnesium is far lighter and stronger than steel, and it’s critical to the aircraft, automobile, steel, and defense industries, which is why the government has bankrolled the venture. Right now, China produces about 85 percent of the world’s magnesium in a dirty, carbon-intensive process. Finding a way to produce magnesium domestically using renewable energy, then, is not only an economic and environmental issue, it’s a strategic one. “With a flick of a finger, China could shut down steelmaking in the U.S. by ending the export of magnesium,” said Alex Grant, Magrathea’s CEO and an expert in the field of decarbonizing the production of metals.

“China uses a lot of coal and a lot of labor,” Grant continued. “We don’t use any coal and [use] a much lower quantity of labor.” The method is low cost in part because the company can use wind and solar energy during off-peak hours, when it is cheapest. As a result, Grant estimates their metal will cost about half that of traditional producers working with ore.

Magrathea — named after a planet in the hit novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — buys waste brines, often from desalination plants, and allows the water to evaporate, leaving behind magnesium chloride salts. Next, it passes an electrical current through the salts to separate them from the molten magnesium, which is then cast into ingots or machine components.

While humans have long coaxed minerals and chemicals from seawater — sea salt has been extracted from ocean water for millennia — researchers around the world are now broadening their scope as the demand for lithium, cobalt, and other metals used in battery technology has ramped up. Companies are scrambling to find new deposits in unlikely places, both to avoid orebody mining and to reduce pollution. The next frontier for critical minerals and chemicals appears to be salty water, or brine.

Brines come from a number of sources: much new research focuses on the potential for extracting metals from briny wastes generated by industry, including coal-fired power plants that discharge waste into tailings ponds; wastewater pumped out of oil and gas wells — called produced water; wastewater from hard-rock mining; and desalination plants.

Large-scale brine mining could have negative environmental impacts — some waste will need to be disposed of, for example. But because no large-scale operations currently exist, potential impacts are unknown. Still, the process is expected to have numerous positive effects, chief among them that it will produce valuable metals without the massive land disturbance and creation of acid-mine drainage and other pollution associated with hard-rock mining.

According to the Brine Miners, a research center at Oregon State University, there are roughly 18,000 desalination plants, globally, taking in 23 trillion gallons of ocean water a year and either forcing it through semipermeable membranes — in a process called reverse osmosis — or using other methods to separate water molecules from impurities. Every day, the plants produce more than 37 billion gallons of brine — enough to fill 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. That solution contains large amounts of copper, zinc, magnesium, and other valuable metals.

[nrspeculator]

Policy Watch: After fraught global meeting, future of deep-sea mining still hangs in balance

By Angeli Mehta August 3, 2023 Nauru nation’s attempt to force UN sea authority, ISA, to finalise ruling on mining fails 21 nations along with financial institutions now calling for a moratorium on deep sea mining Discussions at ISA’s assembly last month stymied, with rule agreement by 2025 ‘not realistic’ Concerns include damage to carbon sinks and poorly understood ecosystems as well as…

[oddthesungod]

I'm tired of this human duet No civilizing hides Our animal impulses🐺

[almacambiondaughterofsaleos]

If You Are Disappointed With What A Shit Show Helluva Boss Has Become Here Are Top 5 Shows To Get On Instead

Lacakdaisy

2. Villainous/Villanos

3. Monkey Wrench

4. Metal Family

5. Murder Drones

[shardanic]

Wanted to do a little update of Yasha's Heavy Metal Harp!

[utilitycaster]

"blades denote commoner status" ok but consider: can't counterspell a dagger in the gut

[perplexingly]

FCG and Frida my beloveds

[barneswilsonrogers]

TWISTED METAL (2023 - ) S0103 "NTHLAW1"

[arabella-strange]

people in the chat are disputing who Tal's character is, but I do [as of !break] think he is the Wildmother: who has better reason to hate the hubris of wizards who despise and murdered the ashari? And who has better reason to want to bring Aeor crashing back to earth, for their defiance of "nature"? She's the WILD mother, her alignment is not "good" -- it is True Neutral.

[septembermonologues]

this feels like it might have been the moment that cemented for liam and ashley that dorian was theirs to keep

[wallflowers-in-the-wind]

Rhysand: You will always have a choice with me Feyre. Except when the universe makes you my mate, bodily autonomy over what clothes you wear, when I allow you to go home, how you handle trauma, when you can go into battle, when you’re sisters (specifically Nesta) are allowed around you, when you are pregnant, anything to do with your pregnancy, what friends I deem appropriate, or the ability to have any secrets what so ever because mind reading!

Feyre: Ummm…

Rhysand: There may be more I’ll decide later in our relationship lol

[sparring-spirals]

Love the idea that the Changebringer is presumably busy with whatever god eating magic destabilizing vaxil'orb moon bullshit is going on but goes through the effort of appearing properly in front of this little robit and interacting with their coin.

and then. he asks: do you need help?

[oddthesungod]

Hound of Ill Omen

[pstelwitchcraft]

🖤 Lady Laudna, Veil Mistress of The Shadow Tree 🖤

[ludinusdaleth]

official devexian art by @triaelf9!