How This Tech Can Break China’s Rare Earth Monopoly | Dr. James Tour

Most wars are fought over resources, water, oil, minerals. >> China has a near monopoly on global critical minerals production. As America struggles to rebuild these industrial capabilities domestically, chemist and nanotechnologist Dr. James Tour at Rice University has found an ingenious solution. We can pull out one metal and then the next and the next and the next. He's pioneered a process to quickly extract critical minerals from something we have readily available, electronic waste. It's much cleaner and much faster. The same method can be used to extract rare earths from mine tailings. The leftover material of old mines that was too expensive to process in the past. >> There's huge availability of this and if you recycle it, metals are infinitely recyclable. This will solve the problem. Now, it won't solve it overnight because we have to gear up, but it could solve the whole problem within five years. >> This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Ya Kell. >> Jim Tour, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, recently the Chinese Communist Party basically put unprecedented export controls on rare earths, frankly affecting the whole Western world. There was a deal reached. There seems to be some backtracking since. What were you thinking when you saw this? >> Well, it's it's not just rare earths. It's it's it's a number of other metals, too. There's now calling them critical metals. So, it it's it's copper, it's indium, gallium, tantelum, uh uh antimony, and and several several others. We've turned over manufacturing to them over the last 30 years and so we have very little capability to manufacture these these metals in the US and a lot of times if they're mined here uh they'll go to China for processing. So we don't have the capability to take the ores and to turn them into the base metals that we can use. It's a big problem and and uh we wouldn't be able to build electric vehicles here. We wouldn't this this would shut down our manufacturing of our automobiles. It it's over. Uh uh this would shut down our Intel plants, our our our chip manufacturing. So it's a very big deal. And even just the threat of it shakes up the markets. >> And now you're working on technology that's directly related to this issue. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So explain that to me. We developed a technology in my group called flash jewel heating. And it's not a name that we coined that that's been around where you put you put a high voltage and a high current through a material that is that is not highly conductive. Some that that is has about a 1 ohm resistance which means that you can conduct electricity to through it. It's much like your your toaster. your toaster, you you you have this this coil that you put a voltage across it and you run this current through, but there's enough resistance that coil gets red hot very quickly. That's flash jewel heating. And uh it's like the old incandescent light bulbs and and you see this big glow. And what we learned is that we can put any carbon material between electrodes and flash heat it turn it into graphine. Graphine is this space age material and we started a company around that that's up and going. But then we realized that we could take we could take uh uh certain materials say industrial waste like fly ash which is the residue that's left over after burning coal the inorganic material we could flash it and we could get rare earth elements to come out and so we we we could do that we get other metals from industrial waste and then also consumer waste consumer electronics and and you can put a high voltage high current and then we learned if you if you put chlorine in during the process then they come out much more easily because you convert them from metal zero or metal oxides to metal chlorides which are much more volatile. You lower the boiling point by 3,000° and and and then they'll come out and just based on the reactivity of a certain metal to chlorine at these higher temperatures. We can predict when they're going to come out and we can separate them coming out. So we developed this technology. We started doing this uh uh in 2020. We started doing this on metals and then it was after that that the metals that the China put this kibash on sending us metals and it became a much more important. So I found myself in this very important area. >> Okay. So let me get this straight. You're taking electronic waste or tailings or something like this. You're putting them between two plates. You're putting a massive amount of current through through it. Wait, you're adding chlorine to lower the temperature that you to to get them this red hot to separate everything out and then you're somehow collecting each uh metal chloride as it basically distills out. Is this do I understand it right? >> You you you have it right. So what happens is when the chlorine comes in at at these high temperatures, the chlorine will react with the metal oxides. or the metal zero by metal zero I mean the base metal you can have a metal oxide or a base metal and it will make the metal chloride and then the metal chlorides distill out and the thing we control is at what temperature are we heating this to to react with the chlorine and then at what temperature are we distilling it out and based on those two parameters we can separate we can pull out one metal and then the next and the next and the next so that's that's Right. It's it's really that simple. It's a very simple operation. Now, remember the rare earth elements right now, the plants that are separating rare earth elements are 500 m long is their process. Now, it won't be a building that long. You know, it'll snake back and forth, but the the it has to traverse that long. This is much shorter, much shorter. And and uh and it will it will do it much faster than what's traditionally used. And we're not bringing it through in water or acids, none of that. It's just through this flashing process. So, it's much cleaner and much faster. As as you know, most wars are fought over resources, water, oil, minerals. People fight over this and they kill each other over this. So, when I was I was presenting this to a group of of generals from NATO and the head guy there, he stood up. He says, "This is going to prevent wars." He says, "I I don't have to fight for this now. If you can do this, if you can take our waste and be producing this for us, I don't have to fight wars over this. And we we can set up these factories." So, the first factory was is is like $40 million, but it's cheaper the next factory we build because we've worked out all the technology. And so if we can put these together and they're they're small localized factories that are now generating a bunch of waste that China has absolutely contaminated some of their cities. I mean it it it's it's just you it's just toxic to live there because of the waste that normally comes from some of these processes. Now you don't have to run them that way. You can run a hydromemetal process and be very quite clean but you have to be able to trap all these secondary wastes. These are clean, easy to set up, and that's why uh uh we're building these companies. The first one is is just outside of Houston in Texas. Uh the next one we we have a site pre-permanent site in Massachusetts, another one in in uh uh in Virginia because these are very clean and uh we've been asked by by the federal government to set up more of these entities around the country and and uh think about this to be able to not be dependent upon other countries. Look at our president. He's going from place to place setting up deals on rare earth elements. here he's talking with with with w with with with uh with Ukraine to to say, "Hey, we'll move in there with you and that will help prevent future wars." I mean, this is dangerous stuff and it's expensive. And uh uh but if we don't have to do this, this is a win-win all around. Thank you for tuning in to American Thought Leaders. In a world where spin and agendas dominate the headlines, I'm proud to bring you unfiltered insights from the brightest minds in America from a relative outsider Canadian perspective. To keep this possible and to access even more exclusive content, in-depth documentaries, and our daily digital newspaper, consider subscribing to the Epoch Times today. It's your way to support independent journalism. Just hit the link in the description below to subscribe and unlock the full American Thought Leaders Experience and so much more. You can try it today for just $1 a week. So, just hit the link in the description below. And now back to the interview. It's sort of astonishing. I I've been learning a bit about this particular process and big big question first of all is you when you think of these circuit let's say circuit boards, right? This is an example of the type of waste that you're using, right? There's a lot of this stuff out there. I mean, we're shipping some of it, as I understand, to Africa to, you know, to to basically waste to to landfill it. I I I don't even know what they're what what they're doing over there with it. >> So, we we we take this waste, electronic waste, a lot of it we just ship to Africa, and they will go through a number of processes to try to reclaim that metal. it's ne in many times it wasn't wasn't worthwhile to us to try to do this. uh they will take it apart and do this but but things have changed and and now there's more money in it and so there's a number of companies but we have for example printed circuit boards I'm not going to individual houses saying would you give me your old cell phones these data centers the every time you store something to the cloud that is going to a data center that is that is uh uh storing in some flash drive on some chip somewhere and on a printed circuit board and they will retire these every 1 to 3 years. So you have a huge number of these things that are made by by many different manufacturers and uh uh and so there's mountains of these and these are considered a toxic waste. Not by me, just by the government because there's a lot of metals and you can't just you can't just throw this in the trash. You can't just easily landfill it. And so there's huge availability of this and if you recycle it, metals are infinitely recyclable. So you can recycle it, recycle it again. And it's just a matter of the traditional ways of purifying this were really messy. You needed a lot of acid, a lot of water, and uh you you generated what was called secondary waist streams from all of this this processing. And the pyometallergical methods of just just melting it all down uh wasn't able to pull these individual metals out as well. And so our method turned out to be quite fruitful, much cleaner, and much cheaper. >> Okay, so wait a sec. Cleaner, cheaper. What kind of numbers are we talking about here? >> Well, when when we we always crunch the numbers now for for any of the papers we publish, we have to do what's called a life cycle uh assessment and a technoeconomic analysis. So we have to look at greenhouse gas emissions, which is mainly CO2 emissions. We have to look at water usage, acid usage, chemical usage, and we have to look at it from the cradle to the gate to where we sell it or the cradle to grave where it's ultimately going to be disposed of again. What what's what's the cost of this this this entire process? And so we have to look at all of these parameters and the numbers that we get. We we can often have uh less than 50% the amount of of CO2 emission. Sometimes just 10% the amount of CO2 emissions. Our costs are significantly less. Many times 80% less, sometimes 50% less, but but uh uh and and then if we take into account the this is where we really win if we take into account the shipping costs. So when something say is mined in Australia, Australia doesn't process anything. This is this is a mining country. Then it is shipped put on barges goes to China where it's processed and then from China it's shipped to places like the United States. So they'll take the raw ore which is just metal oxides and they'll they'll convert it to to uh the base metals all separate and then those come on barges to the US. So look at all that's involved in the shipping. If we could just have it right here in the United States, we don't have any of that shipping charge. And a mining operation is huge. Just the the capex in a new mining operation is $200 million. $200 million. We could set up one of our factories for for processing this material. Somewhere in the order of about $40 million. So So 5x difference based on that. We don't have that huge amount of shipping costs all over the world. of moving things back and forth and we don't have the shipping ch when we shipping cost of sending these off to Africa when we're done. So if we're looking at at the at to the grave site uh uh uh we save all of that. So overall it it it's a very competitive business. >> I understand it's something like 75% of these circuit boards are actually still in in the consumer the consumer level at homes and so forth. Is that right? >> Yes. So, so that's always a problem when it comes to waste. How do you get it? Now, the nice thing about the printed circuit boards from the data centers there there mountains of this that they have. There's but uh uh the the things that are in in households, that's always hard to get. That's what makes the recycling of plastic very difficult. People have to throw their plastic away and then they're they're hand sorted and things like that. It's a difficult thing. And plastics that have been recycled are never as good as the base plastic because a lot of these polymer chains break. Whereas with metals, you don't have that. Metal goes to metal. Uh they're infinitely recyclable. They they don't go bad, but it's yes, it's accumulating. How do you get these things? But there are other sources that you don't you're not dependent upon that. So there's there's things called tailings where there's been mining operations and there were things that just weren't pure enough for them to go the next step. They had other impurities. They have they have huge ponds full of these things that are that are a nightmare for them because they have to maintain these ponds that have a plastic lining to make sure they don't leech into the water system or they're stacked up in piles and and and uh uh accumulated. Those are just sitting there. That to us is a treasure because we can take those bring them through this flashing process and bring them up from from 20% purity which might be unusable to them to 95% purity in an instant. I mean it takes us seconds to to to bring it up that high and we use very little water and our only cost is electricity but overall our electricity is much lower than the traditional processes because we're so fast. We use a lot of electricity for a very short time and overall our electricity usage is small. >> Let me understand this though. So it's the same technology that you're using for the tailings and for this recycle waste that you're going to recycle from the consumer waste and from the data centers. I mean is it still the same technology for just actual ore? >> Is it it's it's the same technology for the actual ore. problem with ores is they're they're they can be a thousand times lower concentration of the metals than what I can get in an electronic waste in in a consumer waste. And so I have to flash a thousand times more volume of material in order to get the same amount of metal. It is much more profitable for us to not work off of ores. And the ores come from some mining operation where they've spent a lot, you know, huge capital equipment to do mining and then transporting it here. If that mine is outside the United States, again, all this shipping charge. So, so, and then it's volume. It's a volume problem. I'd much rather work off of electronic waste where you might have a printed circuit board could be 25% metal, whereas an ore might be 1% metal. and and uh so it's it's just a it's just a a big big difference or less than 1% metal. So it it it's much better. And so from a from an environmental standpoint, it's much better. From an energy standpoint, it's much better. And if we can just think about using our waste and recycling it, it's a good story all around. So the electronic waste is a thousand times more concentrated with these metals that we want compared to regular ore. What about the tailings? >> The the tailings can be quite high. It's not as good as the electronic waste that I can get from a printed circuit board, but the the tailings have already been preurified from the ores. So, they've taken the ores and they've they've they've concentrated it and they have something that's just not high enough for them to bring on the next step. They'd like to use it, but there's too much other things in there, but it's still a preconcentrate. So, what's the catch here? I mean, it it seems like this this is the the perfect solution to actually, you know, getting the US up and running in terms of production of these metals. The catch here is that nobody's ever done a process like this before. So, we had to go from my laboratory where we start on 50 milligrams and then we bring it up to 2 or three grams and then it has to go to where they're going to be processing many tons a day. 20 tons a day is what the projection is is. So the they'll start with a ton a day in January of 2026 and by by September October they hope to be 20 tons a day of printed circuit boards where where they would get uh uh some some portion of that may maybe maybe uh uh uh two tons per day to to four tons per day of of metals out of that. So the catch is how do you scale this? So we spent 2 years working with engineering companies to be able to scale up this process. And that was actually it was actually if you look at it it was actually more than two years because on the graphine side when we were making graphine we spent from 2019 until 2025 before we hit the one ton a day mark. >> It was so we learned a lot doing that. Then when we started the metal separation company, it took another two years to for the chlorine introduction part and the separating of the metals from that because it's not exactly the same technology. It's related to the graphine. But so so it it it it had to be developed. All of this had to be discovered. >> So you you hold these new patents. Are you are you worried anyone wants to get their hands on them? Well, the so so the patents are all owned by the university. When we start these companies, we license that technology from the universities and uh we file patents broadly. We file it in Europe. We we we file in in in many parts of Asia including China. And and uh patents are is is you know there's they give you protection but you have to enforce that. Now there are domains and countries that violate these especially if they consider it important for their economy. They will violate uh they cannot sell it into the United States or they can't technically sell it into anywhere where we have patent protection. Uh but there are violations on that and so so sometimes you have to go to court to protect these things. Uh so that's a costly business. But but uh uh going into a country like China and trying to enforce your patents. First of all, it's hard for me to get patents in China. They all know me in the patent office there. I I I patent a lot. I file one disclosure a month for the last 26 years. So there's there's a lot of patents that I have. And China, unless I have a Chinese partner, they'll never approve my patent. They just give me the runaround, give me office a office actions and slow walk this thing. And uh so it's it's really not a fair process in some of these countries. And then it's not just China. I mean, we don't even bother filing patents in Russia because if you go to defend it, you get run over on your way to the courthouse or something. I mean, so so so you you don't even bother with Russia. And uh uh but you you try to gain some some space and operating room as you can. Ho how long would this waste electronic waste possibly last? Because we're going to need a lot of this and we're only going to need more and more year after year. Right. >> Right. So, so because we have so many tailings all over the country from former mines that are sitting there that that that are waste sites that have to be managed and and uh uh these waste sites, they will gladly let you take it off their hands. They have to manage it, make sure it doesn't get into the environment or they're they're they're Now, we can also deal off of other types of waste. we can deal off of uh uh what's called uh uh uh red mud, which is boite residue. It's the residue that's left o over after after uh aluminum production. As far as the eye can see, you can see these these red fields, big kinks that are that are 10 ft high and just as far as the eye can see. This is hematite. It is iron mixed in with the aluminum and some titanium. How do you get these are tailings, meaning that they're too contaminated with iron to get at the aluminum that still resides in there? So, we can just flash this in an instant. We pull out the iron and that can then go right back into the normal aluminum purification. So, we're cleaning up waste sites, uh, things that were too expensive. But when you when you make it so that it's economical, you make money by cleaning up the site. Not only do they pay you to clean it up, then you take that material, you make money. That's the only way to get these sites cleaned up. So, we we have the red mud and then we also have mountains of fly ash in this country. Fly ash is the inorganic residue from coal burning. So, you burn coal, the carbon burns away, you're left with the inorganic material. It's it's aluminum, calcium, silicon, and then it has other metals in it. So, we can get these metals out. We've demonstrated it. Now, I would rather work off of electronic waste because because it has a higher percentage of the metals that I want, but we we've demonstrated it. So, you have these huge waste facilities that are there. So, we could run for a long time based on this. But if we had to supplement with with uh uh these waste wi with ores, we might use ores, but I would rather get their tailings because the tailings for me are useful. So for example uh e even in in lithium mining again lithium is a critical metal we need it for all our lithium ion batteries every electric vehicle every cell phone has lithium so so the tailings a lot of times the the the particles are too small for them to deal with that doesn't affect me at all I I can run off the small particles so I can take the things that have no value to them and use them there are other minds that that that are are what are called what they They'll have the rare earth elements but not as oxides in these mines. They'll be as phosphates. That's useless to them. It's hard for them to process the rare earth element phosphates. Doesn't bother this process. We can take what is to them useless material and turn it into into good material. And so it takes off the table this idea of we've got to get our elements because if we can't get these if if really we can't get these there will be wars fought over this. I can guarantee you that. The one thing that strikes me here is that um you know this is also something that Americans could actually be rallied around because there is a lot of this electronic waste at home for example, right? And I I mean I think this um these export controls which the Chinese Communist Party threatened America and frankly the entire West with are kind of were a crystallizing moment at least. I I hope they were a crystallizing moment. So I I wonder if this isn't even have a kind of a patriotic dent in it to it or element to it. >> Yes. If you could tell people that that that if you take your electronics that you're getting rid of and you put them in a certain container to be carded off, this is patriotic. I mean, that that would be a further incentive for people to do it. Uh uh so so so these things are there, but but also also what we're getting from from the Trump administration is we're getting a um a guaranteed floor price. So they're saying we will pay you X amount for your rare earth elements because what will happen is this is the way some countries operate. So they they they don't like us developing this business. They will artificially lower their price in a way that we could never compete and drive us out of business. As soon as we're out of business, they will raise the price back up. So what the US government is already doing preemptively saying we will guarantee you this price. And it's not really the US government supplementing it. It is that's the price that it's going to ultimately be sold for. And so so by doing this, they they will allow us to get this start that we won't be driven out of business. So we're getting actually a lot of help and and consideration from the US government to say, hey, we we really have to do this. So this is an important thing for the country and uh we we we offshored so much of our manufacturing uh we're trying to reshore a lot of that and because we we see what can happen and President Trump went and he recently as you know made a deal and China said okay we'll start selling this to you again you know I wonder I wonder how much of that was just out of the goodness of their hearts or because they saw these other technologies coming online because when you when you make it difficult for somebody to get something they will figure out another way. It always happens. I saw it happened in oil and gas industry with guar for fracking. The Indians kept raising the price and then boom they came out to something called slick water which you had polyacryamid a chemical to so you pump at a fast rate. you find a way around. But interestingly, after President Trump left a couple weeks later, they say, "Uh, yeah, we will sell it to the US, but it can't go into any of your military hardware." >> So, so, uh, so again, we have to have our own capability. We can't be held to the whims of other people around this. And that technology that the Chinese are using that was developed in the US. Actually, it was developed in the US during the Manhattan project because we had to get the rare because when you get uranium, you get rare earth elements with it. We had to separate the rare earth elements to get the uranium. So, we figured out how to do all of this separation. That technology was purchased in uh by China. Uh uh actually it started to get purchased in the 60s again heavily in the 1980s. uh and because the US was getting out of the business because in the rare earth element business you were pulling up uranium with it. Now we want the rare earth elements. We didn't need the uranium and that was for us a a uh uh a radioactive waste which is very expensive to get rid of and so the Chinese bought the technology and again we didn't realize that we were selling something that that turned out to be very important to our country. >> Before we continue just tell me a little bit about yourself. I mean, you seem to know quite a bit about all this. I know you do. >> Well, I I I am I'm trained as an organic chemist, but I work quite broadly. I've been a professor for 36 years. I'm a professor of chemistry of of material science and nanoengineering and computer science. So, I I I have to know things across many different fields. But I've started 17 companies that range from pharmaceutical companies to materials companies to electronics companies. So, so I've I've worked in this space broadly uh always from the chemical perspective but then even building devices and and and thinking of things electronically. So, so my my group I have a big research group and and so it it thinks quite broadly and and I've consulted a lot on the department of defense served on on committees related to the defense science board and the defense science study group. So, I've looked at it from the military side as well. I I should add, you know, you you said you started 17 companies, but quite a number of these companies have been quite successful. >> Well, they they've made some people some money >> and so so you're also you're also attuned in the business realm. I guess that's >> Yeah, I don't like it, but I I I let other people do that. And I'm never an officer director in the companies. That's how I can have 17. >> I don't run it. Other people do. I I don't particularly like the business side. I'm I'm forced to balance my checkbook, so I have to know a little bit, but uh uh other other people run it, but I'm I'm familiar with how businesses work. Yes. >> Right. Well, exactly. And it it's, you know, the the right product at the right time. Is there It's kind of a mantra like this, right, of how you get business success, >> right? The the thing that makes this a little bit hard is that is that these metal prices can fluctuate a lot. So you're subject to that. Now, one of the metals that does not fluctuate a lot is gold. Now, still gold can go up and down, but it doesn't it it's not as big of a fluctuation as many of these other metals. And so what we're always going to have is the gold operation. Now, gold is not considered a critical metal. It's not that China is not selling us gold, but but uh that's not a problem. But we are we are we've now been solicited by by jewelry manufacturers say that for them the electronic waste gold is a great selling point because some people don't want to buy jewelry that has caused people to have mining because mining operations are inherently hard on the environment and gold mining often is is cyanide based and so it's it's a messy dirty toxic operation. And they say that there's a good market for gold jewelry that is made from gold that is reclaimed from waste. People like that. So they will pay us top dollar for that gold. So So the gold will be for us like a buffer >> that will always be be purifying gold because a lot of electronic waste has gold in it. Sometimes touch screen displays which we say are indium tin oxide has indium and tin. There's actually more gold in a lot of these than there is indium and tin. So, we grab all of that gold. We're not going to discard gold because because there's a very high price on it. The other thing that for us is very good that we're moving into is catalytic converters. If you've ever had a catalytic converter stolen from underneath your car, which a lot of it's $2,000 to replace it, that is just a a a uh a metal oxide that's that has platinum, palladium, and roodium. Those three metals are needed to take the carbon monoxide that is comes out of an exhaust and create and convert it to carbon dioxide to take it from a a very toxic gas to a much less toxic gas and and uh uh then some people would say not toxic at all. So you convert it to carbon dioxide. You have to have that. But the catalytic converters after about 10 years don't don't work very well anymore. So all of those are are recycled. For us to pull the platinum, palladium and roodium out is much cheaper than for the traditional processes and platinum, palladium and roodium are very high price particularly roodium uh uh and then platinum and then then third palladium. But all of these are pre what are called precious metals and uh uh not just critical metals but precious metals which means that the price on them is much higher. So we can get a much higher return from these and already in place is a system to reclaim catalytic converters. Catalytic converters are already claimed reclaimed. There are companies that all they do is they have the equipment that tears these things open and reclaims this material and then we would get this material from them and turn it around because our process will be cheaper. And also we're not popping over in cell phones and things like that. There are already companies that do that because they are trying to reclaim certain parts of these phones to reuse in refurbished phones. So, we get from them something and this this is good for the bottom line of their business because now they have an avenue to sell parts to us that they wouldn't use anyway. And then we would reclaim those parts just by con just by pulling the metals back out. And actually, we've been talked to by other companies that really want the glass, the glass that's on the iPhone, the glass that's on the cell phones because that glass has lithium in it. And that to them is a good recovery source. That lithium makes it a very tough glass. So, they are reclaiming the lithium that's in the glass. So, so in in many ways, it's it's sort of like uh American Indians where where they used every part of the animal. uh even in these printed circuit boards we've already got in place in this company because when they flash it the plastic is turned into carbon monoxide and hydrogen why hydrogen the hydrogen hydrogen bond is much stronger than the carbon hydrogen bond so the hydrogen atoms prefer to come out as H2 that H2 is a tremendous fuel source so you can use that to to run generators to run your company or you can take the carbon monoxide hydrogen mixture which is what's called sin gas s yn sin gas and that is used in the chemical industry every day for making a lot of the chemicals that we use on a routine basis that mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is very good it's it's used in a reaction called the hydroformmulation reaction and and the plant we're building is very close to the Houston ship channel that uses a lot of sin gas so there's an outlet for that so even even the plastic from the printed circuit boards is to less valuable. B >> basically you're telling me that there really is very very little waste here in the process. >> Very little waste in the process. There will be some things that we can't use but very little waste. And so so it's it's a it's a big win. It's a big win for our country. It's a big win for for the the environment. So uh uh the company has already been taken public and and uh so people can just invest. >> There's also military waste. That's another piece, right? >> Huge. Military waste is huge, right? You you you get a retired aircraft. >> So So retired aircraft that has a lot of the rare earth elements and the critical metals, uh a a retired submarine, uh retired batteries, lots of military waste and lots of flame material in the military. Uh all that antimony we we can get back out. So yes, that is for us a constant source. >> And I'm trying to imagine what this looks like. And in my mind, I was sort of imagining, you know, a sort of a chipper that that is fed all these different basically types of waste, but a very, you know, very industrial. What does this actually look like? Paint me a picture. >> So, so I have never walked into the company. Yeah. We I start the company and there's a reason for that is that I'm a professor. I'm trained to speak and so I don't even want to learn about their knowhow, how they do the conversion. Yeah. I'm a I'm a scientific adviser. I say you can try this, try try that. But I can tell you the basic layout. It's exactly what you say. There is a way to take large pieces. It chops it up into small. So grinding and breaking things up. The machines for that are already well known in the industry. We don't have to develop that. So it breaks it up into small pieces. It will go into an environment where it's heated to extremely high temperatures and uh uh uh the way we do it in our labs is what's called resistive heating and and and so it goes into resistive heater. It heats up very high while chlorine gas is injected in. Chlorine is a commodity chemical. It's used in very large volumes. all of PVC, polyonylchloride, plastic, I mean it's all all uh uh use chlorine in very large amounts and so the the the chemical engineering for the use of chlorine gas is extremely worked out well worked out. It safety operations for capturing it. Any excess is recycled and brought on through. So you heat it up under chlorine and then these metals come distilling out and you trap the metals as they come distilling out and you individually distill them out based on their boiling point of their temperature and based on what's called a free energy of formation of the chloride. At what temperature do the chloride form the metal chloride and then at what temperature does the metal chloride come distilling out? But metal chlorides distill out at relatively low temperature compared to metals and metal oxides. sometimes 3,000 degrees lower temperature. We can distill out these metal chlorides and then we will sell them as some metal chlorides or you expose them to air and air oxidation and they'll convert back to metal oxides and we'll trap the HCL that comes out. That that that's basically how the operation runs. Comes in as these printed circuit boards and comes out as metals in different metal streams and then those are sold. Something that I really like about this uh model that you're describing is that you for a relatively small investment you it's almost like I don't know want to use the term modular but you can imagine you know people licensing this technology and sort of you know starting up these relatively small operations you know all over the country to and this is act it feels like an actual method to within a year's time because That's kind of the rough window that I think the US has to figure this out. Actually, it would it be possible to get independent within a year's time. Is that >> uh I I don't think we'd be able we'd be running that fast to get the US US independent in a year's time. But uh uh um what it would do is it would it would it would give us a map to get independent. I could see it happening within 5 years where we're really independent on this. But if if we had if we had help because we are licensing it out. Uh we're licensing it out in some of the the for example for the uh uh for the boxite residue the aluminum work. We're licensing that out and uh we could build many of these companies and yes they are modular. They go in and and for a manufacturing site that you can do that you can get these things going for a few tens of millions of dollars that's not very much when it comes to this type of manufacturing. The the one thing that strikes me is you did mention that it takes a lot of electricity, a lot of energy and you know that that said I was just at an energy a round table of energy experts and and you know the discussion is entirely around how do we deliver enough power to run the data centers for AI essentially I mean that's that's the bottom line this would sort of fit into that the rubric of trying to you know increase you know build we're talking nuclear nuclear all of a sudden is you know okay uh uh again um you know basically any anything goes >> yes overall our energy is less than the traditional recycling operations and traditional mining our energy is less we need a lot of power for short intervals of time when we do that flash it may only be seconds that we bring in high high electricity our electricity overall demand is much less than the data center. >> In fact, one of the ways to get cheaper electricity is you you build something next to a data center because they're already bringing in a lot of electricity and you pay fractionally more than what the data center pays. So, the electric company will gladly siphon it off to you in those bursts when you need it. >> So, there there ways to do that, but compared to the data centers, we're nowhere close and we are less than the normal industry. But what we need, which is unusual, we need bursts of electricity. So there's where we may bring in a 4 megawatt line into the system so that we can bring in a lot all at once, but then it's turned off between these operations. So you flash and you're done. New material is brought in, flash, and you're done. And so it comes in on a belt. >> So bottom line, does this solve the entire problem with communist China when it comes to these metals? Yes, the these metals are now called critical metals because we can't get them anymore. So, they've been named critical metals, which is rare earth elements plus a number of other metals. This will solve the problem. Now, it won't solve it overnight because we have to gear up. And so, but it could solve the whole problem within 5 years. If we push this process, it could solve our problem within 5 years where we would get to a steady state where we're able to produce as much as we use. If we have to bring in more, we have these mountains of tailings that we can access and and we have these these uh constant mountains of of printed circuit boards. If we had to supplement, we can run off the ores. So, if you had to do mining again, we can always run off the ores, but this would solve it. We would be able to manufacture what we need. >> Well, Jim, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation for me. A quick final thought as we finish. Uh this this for me is is so much fun to be able to go in a laboratory, devise something new, publish papers, graduate students. That's my business. That's what I do. But then to see this translate into a company always brings it up enough another level. But now where it has so much need for this country to be able to solve a critical problem for the country, this is like uh every scientist's dream. Well, Jim Tour, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. >> Thank you. >> Thank you all for joining Jim Tour and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host Ya Kell.