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Breaking the Battery Industry’s Mineral Supply Crunch

Battery Show keynoter ReElement CEO Mark Jensen shares the global supply chain outlook—and refining tech that may upend it.

Geoff Giordano

October 8, 2024

6 Min Read
ReElement's Mark Jensen at The Battery Show 2024
ReElement CEO Mark Jensen speaking at The Battery Show North America on October 8, 2024 in Detroit.ReElement

Since supply chains were thrust into the spotlight by the Covid pandemic and the tentatively settled U.S. port strike, every imaginable industry has grappled with ensuring reliable availability of critical materials—especially minerals required for more widespread electric mobility.

The monopoly on minerals that feed the battery industry requires more cost-competitive refining innovations to break, asserted Mark Jensen, CEO of Indiana-based ReElement. He addressed how new technology from ReElement and Purdue could reshape those supply chains in his keynote address “Developing a Cost Effective Critical Mineral Supply Chain in a Competitive Market” today during The Battery Show North America at Detroit’s Huntington Place.

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China’s grip, pandemic lessons

Today’s global battery supply chain comes down to one word, Jensen told Battery Technology: “China.”

“Region, type, technology all must go through China to reach the market. There are some exceptions – and the United States is in the middle of playing catch-up in a big way," he noted. "However, most of the upstream mining to midstream refining to downstream manufacturing and assembly is controlled by Chinese-owned and operated state entitles.”

To be sure, critical cathode and anode resources are mined across the globe, with plenty of lithium coming from South America and cobalt from Africa. But those operations receive significant Chinese investment “either directly through ownership or indirectly through investment at the local state level.”

Africa is a key example of this, he said. “Many nations have massive debt owed to China. In exchange for lenient repayment schemes, China takes the opportunity to extract resources and royalties from the locals. The same is mostly true for the downstream refining and battery manufacturing activities with the difference being the IP and knowledge are guarded more closely at the state level."

Meanwhile, Australia and Canada “have always been two meaningful exceptions to the current paradigm – but the numbers do not compare to the current productivity and technological output from China.”

Compounding the challenges of remaking mineral supply chains for the battery industry are evolving battery chemistries and designs, Jensen noted.

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The supply strains brought on by the pandemic are forcing head-on confrontation of these issues:

“The lesson of the pandemic was not to allow consolidation of IP, human capital and resources into one specific region or county. The world sleepwalked into that mistake, and certain nations saw that as an opportunity to capitalize. Both the current and previous administrations tried to correct those mistakes and have shared much success. However, supply chains are not rewritten overnight.”

Hurdles and opportunities

While the need to change the status quo is clear, large legacy organizations might be hesitant to remake their supply chains with entirely new systems. That makes the current climate ideal for startups like ReElement.

“There are sometimes stepwise technologies that come to market that can accelerate innovation. We at ReElement Technologies strongly believe we currently hold one of those rare technologies that is decentralizing, diversifying and de-risking supply chains for rare earth and critical battery elements.

“This current paradigm takes just one or two large manufacturers to evaluate the risks and buy into our value proposition, which is high-yield, high-purity, low-cost mineral purification and separation. Eventually, when institutional buy-in occurs, the whole supply chain gets to witness the technology's efficiency in real time.”

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ReElement is licensing Purdue University’s chromatographic refining platform. A team at Purdue’s College of Engineering developed this advanced technology for separating and purifying rare earth and battery elements from sources such as ores, postindustrial waste, and recycled magnets. It improves upon current industrial methods by reducing energy, water usage, and hazardous chemicals while producing nearly zero waste. It also offers higher extraction yields, greater purity, a smaller footprint, and improved efficiency compared to traditional methods.

ReElement first licensed Purdue's rare earth technology in 2021. An agreement signed this year expands the use of these technologies, allowing the company to process rare earth and battery elements from any feedstock material. The company has since developed commercial-scale processes based on these innovations.

The platform “is nothing short of remarkable. The technology often outperforms its own laboratory empirical data at the larger, commercial scale. We are excited to showcase this unique critical mineral refining technology at the global scale," Jensen said.

To infinity and beyond

ReElement’s tagline—“finite resources made infinite”—indicates the company’s strategy with this new technology.

The technology’s unique high-purity lithium and mineral refining capabilities start with a processing column featuring densely packed internal binding resin, Jensen explained.

“Each resin bead resembles a microscopic hollow wiffle ball with tunnel-like, nanometer-scale microporous channels that expand the allowable metal-binding surface area running through the interior.” Each column, of one meter diameter and two meters tall, is filled with hundreds of millions of these beads.

“Every feedstock type—from recycled batteries to black mass to concentrate—that is put through our processing columns can ultimately be put back through those same columns years later at that particular end-use application’s end-of-life,” Jensen said. “The process can continue ad infinitum without any meaningful loss of critical minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese or separately the rare earth elements and exotic defense industrial metals.”

Lined up in sequence, these columns “effectively replace the equivalent of an entire solvent extraction refinery site covering hundreds of acres. Additionally, the chromatographic process ReElement deploys uses far fewer harsh chemicals compared to current industry standards, making it far more environmentally sustainable. Our technology makes the current refining standards smaller, faster and cheaper.”

Where to start remaking supply chains

Given the enormity of the task at hand, Jensen stressed that the core element in fostering this new refining method is a team with the commitment and patience to meet commercial objectives. ReElement is winning buy-in with “our growing roster of partners” and word of mouth building “at the highest levels of the federal government,” Jensen said.

“We have a very realistic action plan in front of us that leverages the technology’s core capabilities—mineral purification and separation—and that plan is moving forward every day with steady momentum. However, these things just take patience and commitment. There is no single company that can affect global supply chains quite like ours, but the task is large, and the timeline is long.”

This re-engineering process extends to energy storage and energy transition timelines, he added.

“The more time that passes, the more the world realizes that supply chains require time, investment and focused will to correct and improve.” For its part, ReElement “is executing on our key operational milestones and meeting the qualification protocols of the larger partners we have lined-out but are not yet able to announce publicly. Every day is another step in that positive direction.”

For more insights like these, register now for The Battery Show North America 2024, running through Oct. 10 at Huntington Place in Detroit. Follow updates from the show on X.

About the Author

Geoff Giordano

Geoff Giordano is a tech journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in all facets of publishing. He has reported extensively on the gamut of plastics manufacturing technologies and issues, including 3D printing materials and methods; injection, blow, micro and rotomolding; additives, colorants and nanomodifiers; blown and cast films; packaging; thermoforming; tooling; ancillary equipment; and the circular economy. Contact him at [email protected].

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