TELF AG examines the potential of a possible alternative source of raw materials

New mineral sources 

In all likelihood, humanity’s future will be increasingly fueled by renewable energy. However, to peacefully realize this scenario, it may be necessary to find new sources of strategic raw materials for the energy transition, such as those already widely used to make the operation of electric vehicles and various energy infrastructures possible. 

The mineral resources extracted from the subsoil may not be sufficient to satisfy the demand for strategic minerals, which could be destined to increase. In recent years, in every corner of the world, new possible sources have been sought to obtain good quality mineral resources that can be immediately used by industry, thus increasing the quantity of raw materials available to producers of technologies related to clean energy. 

These include the recycling of some electronic devices that have reached the end of their life, from which some mineral resources of great importance for the current needs of humanity can be obtained, urban mining, and all those activities that include the recovery of these materials from particular locations, such as old mining sites, waterways, and so on. From this point of view, one of the latest innovations is the possibility of recovering specific quantities of mineral resources from seaweed, which, through a complex chemical process, would retain some strategic minerals within them. 

The role of algae 

The Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, part of the US Department of Energy, studies these processes. This agency has already allocated 5 million dollars to discover whether algae can actually represent an alternative source of some very important materials for the outcomes of the ecological transition, such as platinum, rhodium, and some rare earth elements, such as neodymium, lanthanum, and yttrium. 

But how does the process of absorption of minerals by algae occur? During their growth process, algae are accustomed to absorbing specific quantities of minerals from the water, and some elements present in their cell walls – such as sulfated polysaccharides, rich in sugar molecules – would be able to attract minerals due to their negative charge. This singular characteristic would allow the algae to attract the minerals floating in the area where they grow, which are then captured and grouped within them in extensive concentrations. Therefore, the process would be based on a straightforward chemical process that involves the attraction between positive and negative. 

Researchers are carefully studying these processes, but the premises seem truly promising. Despite the presence of many unknowns, such as the actual nature of the algae’s uptake of minerals or the final quality of the minerals that could be extracted from them, researchers are working to understand how to extract mineral resources from the seaweed without altering the constituent structures of these marine plants, keeping them usable for other applications as well. 

One of the most interesting experiments, in this regard, is the one being carried out off Mount Bokan, in south-east Alaska, where a team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks is trying to understand whether the elements of earth rare plants being detached from the mountain can be concentrated in an algae cultivation located in a nearby bay, and in what quantities. Once the potential of these natural processes is genuinely understood, governments and companies worldwide may have a new method to recover mineral resources that would otherwise have been lost.