“This week, Tesla North America and Elon Musk announced that the largest and most advanced lithium refinery in the United States is now operational.

The Tesla Lithium Refinery just outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, is another step toward the U.S. goal of having domestic refined lithium resources to counter China’s market dominance…

The refinery converts spodumene ore directly into battery-grade lithium hydroxide, in a first-of-its-kind process in North America.

Tesla uses a new technology platform that allows a cleaner, simpler, and cheaper process to obtain battery-grade lithium from the raw material, spodumene ore, says Jason Bevan, Site Manager for Tesla’s Gulf Coast Lithium Refinery.

Tesla says it sustainably sources spodumene and brings it to site where it runs it through a series of conveyance systems, takes it through a kiln and a cooler. From there, the material is taken through an alkaline leech and additional purification steps, and then into crystallization to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide.”

From Yahoo Finance.

“Rio Tinto late last year began using the process to extract copper from U.S. ores that are traditionally hard to process and often become waste.

It involves using microorganisms — or “bioleaching” — to remove copper from sulphide ores. Rio Tinto is initially working at a once-dormant Gunnison Copper Corp. site in Arizona and hopes to deploy the tech elsewhere in North and South America.

The intrigue: The process ‘removes the need for traditional concentrators, smelters and refineries, significantly shortening the mine-to-market supply chain,’ today’s announcement states.

It also uses far less water — about 55% as much per unit of copper as the global industry average.”

From Axios.

“Scientists working with China’s fully superconducting Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) have successfully reached a long-theorized ‘density-free regime’ in fusion plasma experiments. In this state, the plasma remains stable even when its density rises far beyond traditional limits. The results, published in Science Advances on January 1, shed new light on how one of fusion energy’s most stubborn physical barriers might finally be overcome on the road to ignition.”

From ScienceDaily.

“South Africans like Dr. Booley have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun.

These aren’t the tiny, old-school solar lanterns that once powered a lightbulb or TV in rural communities. Today, solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses — auto factories and wineries, gold mines and shopping malls. And they are changing everyday life, trade and industry in Africa’s biggest economy.

This has happened at startling speed. Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 percent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity.”

From New York Times.