Recovering high-value metals from mining waste

Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) for High-Value Metals Production

The world’s large-scale mining operations produce over 100 billion tons of solid waste per year, and the current waste storage and treatment facilities are unprofitable. However, this mining waste, known as slag, often contains useful and precious resources. The challenge is reclaiming them.

We are empowering mining companies to recover value from a liability while advancing a circular economy for the metals industry. MOE uses electricity to selectively extract valuable metals from complex, low-concentration materials that are currently considered waste. Through leveraging a natural by-product of metal production, mining companies can create new revenue streams while reducing the financial liabilities of slag. With MOE, the metals industry has a scalable, cost-competitive and sustainable solution to produce a variety of metals and alloys from a wide range of feedstocks.

Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) for Steelmaking

We’ve developed an electrolysis process that eliminates the need for coal in steel production. Our MOE platform uses renewable electricity to convert all iron ore grades to high-quality liquid metal. This direct approach eliminates several steps in the steelmaking process and does not require coke production, iron ore sintering and pelletizing, blast furnace reduction or basic oxygen furnace refinement.

In the MOE cell, an inert anode is immersed in an electrolyte containing iron ore, and then it’s electrified. When the cell heats to 1600°C, the electrons split the bonds in the iron oxide in the ore, producing pure liquid metal. No carbon dioxide or other harmful byproducts are generated, just oxygen. Furthermore, MOE does not require process water, hazardous chemicals or precious-metal catalysts.

The result is a clean, high purity liquid metal that can be sent directly to ladle metallurgy — no reheating required.