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Metal Without Mining

magratheametals.com

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Re: Metal Without Mining

#61

Post by justinator »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #15
macinjosh wrote: post #11

Ok, hear me out. If stripping these minerals from the land had a negative impact wouldn’t stripping them from ocean water (which is the medium containing life, unlike ore) may also have negative consequences?? Seems to me like a pretty drastic alteration of ocean water chemistry in the long term. What if animal biology expects the magnesium to be available?

Eh no. Oceans are big. Really big. Unbelievably big even. We're talking about filtering tiny fractions of ocean water, and nowhere close to all of it. Literally a drop in the ocean in comparison. So, no. This is not a serious concern.

Every time there's a natural resource humans want to exploit, this is almost always been an argument, and it's almost always been wrong.

"look how many fishes are in the river! You can walk across the river by standing on the fishes!"

"Look how trees are in this forest! You can't see the end!"

Not to get all Derrick Jensen on this, but a red flag has been raised in my mind, as has my left eyebrow.

Re: Metal Without Mining

#62

Post by hammock »

geuis wrote: post #43

This entire website and company reads like a penny pink sheets stock scam. "Magrathea sells metal using multi-year supply agreements in countries with enforceable contract law. Supply agreements allow our partners to build in magnesium with confidence. We prevent price instability from Chinese trade manipulation so the innovative products of our partners can succeed in the market." There's absolutely no information o…

>There's absolutely no information on the site detailing their tech. Just a lot of buzzwords.

They are isolating magnesium from brine, and hope to use it as a structural material that is competitive with steel or aluminum (for certain, not all, use cases, obviously).

FYI a ChatGPT summary of their website gave me this info

Re: Metal Without Mining

#63

Post by scarby2 »

jerf wrote: post #32
IntrepidWorm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking strictly of mineral removal this rings true. However, processing large volumes of seawater can still have a detrimental effect on the local ecosystem, because pumping large volumes of seawater is extremely stressful to all of the seawater-loving organisms that get pulled along for the ride.

See also the trouble around desalinization plants. In absolute terms, we couldn't hope to remove enough salt from the oceans to be even so much as detectable in the absolute sense, but in local terms water with increased salinity can cause problems. Oceans are not hives of life everywhere you look, it's really just in spots, and those spots are generally right where we want to be and to put our desalization plants. P…

there have been desalination trials with spreading the brine over a much larger area releasing much smaller quantities at each outlet. AFAIK these have been quite successful

I'm unsure on the impact of costs. Maybe we just pump it into the salton sea....

Re: Metal Without Mining

#64

Post by sbierwagen »

Brine mining isn't new, of course. Table salt is the canonical example of a metal compound extracted by evaporating brine, but there's a dozen other elements that are harvested at scale for profit from various brines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining including Magnesium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining#Magnesium_and_mag...

If you're in the bay area, you've seen a brine mine dozens of times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Salt_Ponds

Re: Metal Without Mining

#65

Post by ChuckMcM »

avernon wrote: post #33
ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

If you are wondering "how" they are doing this, I believe this company is the externalization of this research: https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/new-method-extract-mag... (Kind of hard to pin down exactly since they don't say a lot about how they are doing it, but a quick check suggests this is the only "new" thing in extracting magnesium recently and Magrathea is a young company[1]) [1] https://www.crunchbase.c…

They mention that they are doing electrochemistry. A huge portion of historical magnesium production is from electrolysis, including the only operating plant in the US. Past methods have used lime to precipitate magnesium (Dow) or evaporation ponds to concentrate it (the current Utah plant). Probably the new thing they are doing is using something like Chlor-Alkali to make base that precipitates the magnesium instead…

Not to be too snarky here, did you read the link to the research? It too uses electro-chemistry with the defining feature: "This new process produces pure magnesium hydroxide, allowing researchers to skip energy-intensive and expensive purification steps."

My reasoning was to note that the Magrathea collateral is pushing "low energy" to make the connection. I am NOT saying I KNOW that this how they are doing it. It is because this is a "mature market" in terms of well established players who are doing this with lime and salt ponds that I was wondering "Has anything changed that would convince a VC (or Angel) to fund a new magnesium producer?" What would have to be true in order to have a value proposition that would convince someone they could succeed against the established players?

And so I go off and search various "research news" web sites to see if there is any news on Magnesium extraction. If they are not using this research then I would be skeptical of their success given the existing market is well established and making a new venture using existing techniques is pretty capital intensive.

Re: Metal Without Mining

#66

Post by marcusverus »

tekno45 wrote: post #38
ummonk wrote: post #37

It's not "impossible" to decarbonize the production of aluminum without driving up cost, as the page claims. Once green electricity and hydrogen is cheaper than CO2-emitting energy, this will be possible and even profitable.

Isn't new renewable power cheaper than new C02 power?

I've yet to hear about renewables that put out consistent power cheaper than gas.

You'll see the occasional article about new solar that's claimed to be cheaper than gas, but they never have sufficient storage to actually stand on their own two feet.

The last one that was posted here on HN was claimed to be cheaper than gas, but it only had enough storage to output 1/2 of its daytime production overnight. In other words, it was cheaper than gas... as long as you've got redundant gas plants to provide power overnight.

Always read the fine print when folks are pitching "cheap renewables".

Re: Metal Without Mining

#68

Post by rmah »

geuis wrote: post #43

This entire website and company reads like a penny pink sheets stock scam. "Magrathea sells metal using multi-year supply agreements in countries with enforceable contract law. Supply agreements allow our partners to build in magnesium with confidence. We prevent price instability from Chinese trade manipulation so the innovative products of our partners can succeed in the market." There's absolutely no information o…

I agree, this smells like a scam. I hope I'm wrong, but...

Re: Metal Without Mining

#69

Post by culi »

sbierwagen wrote: post #64

Brine mining isn't new, of course. Table salt is the canonical example of a metal compound extracted by evaporating brine, but there's a dozen other elements that are harvested at scale for profit from various brines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining including Magnesium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_mining#Magnesium_and_mag... If you're in the bay area, you've seen a brine mine dozens of times: https:…

I've wondered about these salt evaporation ponds a lot. It's the traditional way sea salt has been harvested in Japan from the sea and also in the mountains of the Andes from mountain deposits of salt water. And it is still harvested industrially like that on some islands.

The thing I'm really curious about is this is happening on a large enough scale does it begin to affect the amount of precipitation that can occur? I'm wondering if it can be utilized to increase rainfall during times of drought

Maybe even long canals to transport the ocean water far inland in very shallow streams that are meant to be evaporated by the sun over time. This uses almost no energy on our part, produces salt, and might possibly help increase rainfall?

Re: Metal Without Mining

#70

Post by Taniwha »

tekno45 wrote: post #38
ummonk wrote: post #37

It's not "impossible" to decarbonize the production of aluminum without driving up cost, as the page claims. Once green electricity and hydrogen is cheaper than CO2-emitting energy, this will be possible and even profitable.

Isn't new renewable power cheaper than new C02 power?

The Hall–Héroult process (electrolysis of alumina to make aluminium) uses a sacrificial carbon anode - every 2 atoms of Al you produce results in 3 CO2 molecules - so for every kg of Al you make ~2.4 kg of CO2
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