About This Project

• Introducing enzyme catalysts to mining as a method of increased retention of metal extraction enables cascading results in (1) drastically shorter leaching times, (2) in turn enabling increased metal retention over time, (3) meaning more exploration or multiple facilities running async, (3) autonomy, (4) complete decarbonisation and independence from smelting, (5) little to no tailings, and most importantly reducing a significant amount of cash flow to meet supply demand.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

At MIT CSAIL, I read a paper on a naturally discovered protein for separating lanthanides - ore the incases rare earth metals - and realized if this natural protein works better than traditional electrochemistry, imagine the fraction of impact a non-natural human designed proteins could do.

Investigating value accretion in mining shows miners have no direct control over exogenous nature of price, but only cost-reducing innovation, which is the only way for miners to control profit margins.

Critical minerals ore needs strong oxidants for economical extraction. Engineering enzymes with affinity towards refectory nature of ore can decarbonize mining by removing dependence on sulfuric acid, which necessitates smelting in order to remove sulfur impurities.

What is the significance of this project?

Mining is simply grinding of rock, separation through smelting & downstream acidity in order to get a high purity metal (i.e. Cu, Fe, Li, G, etc). Traditional extraction techniques are inefficient, energy intensive, and hazardous.

70% of Cu is stuck in low-grade chalcopyrite ore, which has a 10-15% annual recovery rate. Right now, the US has a smelting cap so most firms will export supply for smelting, laundering CO2 production in other countries, and still face abatement fees on every ton of CO2 emitted - all of which is averaged into the cost of the metal.

Leading to supply/demand inelasticity, confounds proper compensation to the original miners, & prevents nations that own copper reserves from establishing a domestic supply of copper & critical minerals.

What are the goals of the project?

The goals of the project are to design the initial library dataset of selectively designed enzymes through conditional generation models to completely bypass laborious chemical discovery process of strain engineering or random mutagenesis. Physical protein assaying will follow in order to measure conversion of kinetics and important binder readouts. By the end, I should be able to outsource scale up by a CMO.

Goal of project: publishing a paper on the enzymatic performance, LCA, & TEA costs of this design-build-test-learn cycle is primary goal to make most unit economic sense before scale up as a feasible business.