Rowow

Did you know that the corn belt produces more oxygen than the amazon rainforest

[Rowow @iRowow]

2,000 to 3,000 students came through Maker Faire Orlando on Friday. At our booth they watched copper ions cross a membrane made from water softener resin and plate out as metal.

They'll grow up in the ionic age. We want them building it.

https://t.co/GUtdqk0uVv

[Rowow @iRowow]

I'm very against TikTok. But ion exchange membrane technology needs a bigger audience than it has, so I opened an account and started posting lab clips there: https://t.co/XsVyBKSCEM

The full Q&As and podcasts are on Spotify too: https://t.co/nxWPOy3ahm

[Rowow @iRowow]

Florida phosphate runs on sulfuric acid, and sulfur hit a record $705 a long ton this quarter. My FLSME talk covers the alternative: hydrochloric acid remade from salt and electricity in a membrane cell, plus the open recipe for the membrane.

https://t.co/wEHu5Ww8KB

[Rowow @iRowow]

@EternalLoL @siddharthkara @joerogan I have e waste targeted to show very shortly. Thank you for the support. Spreading the word definitely is the best and most important way to help

[Rowow @iRowow]

I don't care to be correct. I care to not be wrong.

[Rowow @iRowow]

Thank you. This tech most definitely is the key solution to ending so many horrible things being done in the world. I find cobalt in my samples I processed. But there never was a technology available to economically extract it and many other blood minerals that are targeted in specific regions of the world only because it's concentrated enough to be able to extract with prior technology

[Rowow @iRowow]

https://t.co/5nwoE1pNhh

[Rowow @iRowow]

@roblun1 The strip-cast line hides the step China guards: oxide to metal by molten salt electrolysis, oxide fed to a fluoride bath near 1,050 C, metal tapped off the cathode at about 10 MWh a tonne. It needs separated oxide and people who have run those cells; the people are scarcer.

[Rowow @iRowow]

A bench run using ion exchange membranes to regenerate scrubbing solution.

A scrubber catches what comes off the cell, and the loaded solution usually ends up as waste. Putting it back across a membrane is the alternative being tested here.

https://t.co/Jm7Xsz4DbT

[Rowow @iRowow]

@RE_Ari18 Agreed, and for rare earths the gap is two plants. Separation eats several tonnes of acid per tonne of oxide; turning oxide into magnet metal takes a molten salt electrolysis cell, and US commercial cells for that step only came online very recently.

[Rowow @iRowow]

Such a amazing week. What a coincidence to receive two grant rejection notices on the very same day today!

Im glad to have those settled and now have some major equipment that will unlock the opportunity to make huge leaps forward.

[Rowow @iRowow]

Cutting PVC foam board on the CNC for electrolysis cells. Toolpath on the laptop, sheet clamped to the bed, cyclone on the dust line. The panels are the cell body and the ion exchange membranes sit between them. Plain plastic and a router, nothing exotic.

https://t.co/QKY0WJ6hGX

[Rowow @iRowow]

Leaching shale ore, a minute of the drum running. Overhead stirrer through a cut in the lid, hose out the side, dark liquor coming off the lip into the tank. This is the front end of the loop that feeds the membrane cell. No numbers in this one.

https://t.co/Q3xXZ3gIFz

[Rowow @iRowow]

@Carlosa_DaNang 95% mixed oxide is the cheap end of the chain. The money is in splitting it into single oxides, and that step burns acid and caustic in bulk, all of which leaves as salt. Turning that salt back into acid and base with current is the cost line to watch.

[Rowow @iRowow]

Solder does not wet bare graphite, it beads up and rolls off. One second in lead alloy held just above its freezing point freezes a metal shell onto the rod. It shrinks on as it cools and takes ordinary solder. Under five cents a connection, open sourced.

https://t.co/HvX574Pb9z

[Rowow @iRowow]

@robert_ivanhoe Cathode with no smelter is the part that matters. Electrowinning makes its own sulfuric acid at the anode, about 1.5 kg per kg of copper, and sends it back to the leach. The harder sulfide ores have no such loop, so that side of US copper queues for the two smelters left.

[Rowow @iRowow]

@drewcrawford_ Much of that US$5,634 a tonne is reagent: tonnes of hydrochloric acid and caustic per tonne of oxide, leaving as salt water. Brazil is one of the few grids where turning that salt back into acid and base with current pencils out, since most of the power is hydro and wind.

[Rowow @iRowow]

@odeliaenergy Much of that operating cost gap is reagents and effluent: several tonnes of hydrochloric acid and a tonne or two of caustic per tonne of oxide, all leaving as salt water to treat. Split that salt back into acid and base with current and much of the premium is a power bill.

[Rowow @iRowow]

@CorrectsYourBS Thanks. The honest version is narrower for now: a cell that pulls metal out of the leach liquor and sends the acid back to the drum, with the numbers that would back a bigger claim still being measured. The design files are public so anyone can check the work as it lands.

[Rowow @iRowow]

Nine seconds inside the continuous mining unit. A look down into the open top of the cell at the dark solids sitting in the liquid, then across to the corner where the black cover meets the frame. No numbers in this one, just the hardware.

https://t.co/bP9GsJ8kuR

[Rowow @iRowow]

@KevinLH811 Scrap is the right feed, around 30% rare earth in a sintered magnet against about 7% at Mountain Pass. Downstream is where onshoring gets thin: turning oxide back into metal usually means a molten salt cell, and commercial US cells only came online very recently.