Extracting strategic metals simply and sustainably
To meet the increasing global demand for metals, 3RC has developed a green biological leach that combines the low-cost and simplicity of heap leaching under ambient, near-neutral pH, conditions, with novel recovery technology, to produce strategic metals, such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium.
Our solutions have been validated at the bench-scale with high recovery rates across several different metals. Extensive testing, to date, implies that our solutions provide a cost-effective alternative to current mineral processing techniques that would enable recovery of strategic metals from both low-grade and high-grade ores with reduced GHG emissions and lower overall environmental risk. We are currently scaling up our solutions and expect to begin pilot plant operations soon after.
This approach is globally significant and offers the tantalizing prospect of being able to extract strategic metals from widely available (but challenging) low-grade deposits. It is a result that has an enormous carbon impact for battery metals and the transition to EVs, essentially supplying more metal to displace more fossil fuels, for less carbon cost.