“Japan has launched the world’s first test to extract rare earth elements from deep-sea mud, aiming to reduce its reliance on Chinese supplies amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions.

Chikyu, a government-backed Japanese mining vessel set sail on Monday for waters near Minamitori Island, a remote coral atoll in the Pacific, to study seabed mud rich in rare earth elements at a depth of about four miles. If successful, the project would mark the first sustained attempt globally to lift rare-earth-bearing sludge from the ocean floor directly onto a ship.”

From MINING.COM.

“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.

“Ionic Mineral Technologies was mining the clay in Utah when it chanced upon what could be the critical mineral equivalent of a gold mine.

Ionic MT had leased the land as part of its business producing nanosilicon for lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles. But the company told WSJ Pro Sustainable Business that what it found was a host of other minerals, in what it says may be the most significant critical mineral reserve in the U.S.

Ionic MT said it discovered high grades of 16 different types of minerals, everything from lithium to alumina, germanium, rubidium, cesium, vanadium and niobium at the site in Utah’s Silicon Ridge…

Independent testing shows that the Utah deposit is made up of ‘a halloysite-hosted ion-adsorption clay,’ which essentially means it can be rich in minerals, the same kind of geological formation that supplies a big chunk of China’s rare earth production, the company said…

The company so far has drilled an area covering more than 600 acres to a depth of 100 feet, but there is much more to explore.”

From Wall Street Journal.