{"id":27638,"date":"2025-05-13T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27638"},"modified":"2025-05-13T07:23:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T07:23:22","slug":"a-toxic-pit-could-be-a-gold-mine-for-rare-earth-elements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27638","title":{"rendered":"A Toxic Pit Could Be a Gold Mine for Rare-Earth Elements"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper.<\/p>\n

The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it\u2019s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over from the Anaconda Copper Company, still uses this alchemical trick in a process at its Continental Pit mine in Butte, Mont.<\/p>\n

Next to the mine is the Berkeley Pit, which is filled with 50 billion gallons of a highly acidic, toxic brew. Montana Resources pipes liquid from the pit, enabling it to cascade onto piles of scrap iron. The iron becomes copper and is gathered for production.<\/p>\n

While methods to remove metals from water have been around a long time, in recent years the global scramble for metals critical to manufacturing and technology advances has given birth to a new generation of extraction technologies and processes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One of the mineral-rich sources researchers are focused on is wastewater, including the brine from desalination plants, oil and gas fracking water and wastewater from mining. Researchers at Oregon State University estimate the brine from desalination plants alone contains metals valued at about $2.2 trillion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater is the ore body of the 21st century,\u201d said Peter S. Fiske, director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab California. \u201cTechnology now is allowing us to pick through the garbage piles of wastewater and pick out the high-value items.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper.The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it\u2019s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over from the Anaconda Copper Company, still uses this alchemical trick in a process at its Continental Pit mine in Butte, Mont.Next to the mine is the Berkeley Pit, which is filled with 50 billion gallons of a highly acidic, toxic brew. Montana Resources pipes liquid from the pit, enabling it to cascade onto piles of scrap iron. The iron becomes copper and is gathered for production.While methods to remove metals from water have been around a long time, in recent years the global scramble for metals critical to manufacturing and technology advances has given birth to a new generation of extraction technologies and processes.One of the mineral-rich sources researchers are focused on is wastewater, including the brine from desalination plants, oil and gas fracking water and wastewater from mining. Researchers at Oregon State University estimate the brine from desalination plants alone contains metals valued at about $2.2 trillion.\u201cWater is the ore body of the 21st century,\u201d said Peter S. Fiske, director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab California. \u201cTechnology now is allowing us to pick through the garbage piles of wastewater and pick out the high-value items.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27640,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27641,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27638\/revisions\/27641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}