An Indian research team has used a mixture of choline chloride and urea to break sulfur bridges in waste tire rubber. The solvent can be reused and is relatively harmless to bacteria. When combined with bacteria, the amount of rubber degraded after 28 days increased nearly eightfold.SEE MORE
Recovering nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium from spent lithium-ion batteries has so far relied mainly on two approaches: high-temperature smelting or leaching in concentrated inorganic acids. Both recover metals effectively, but they come with high energy costs, occupational safety risks and corrosive waste that is hard to treat. A research team in Australia has now published an alternative process that uses a “gentler” solvent yet still achieves metal recovery rates above 95%.SEE MORE
A mining company has announced exploration drilling results indicating a very high-grade potash deposit in Utah, USA. The discovery comes at a time when the resilience of the US potash supply chain is being called into question amid trade tensions with Canada, which accounts for nearly three-quarters of domestic consumption.SEE MORE
Phosphoric acid (H3PO4) made by the wet process, in which concentrated sulfuric acid digests phosphate rock, is the second most produced acid in the world after sulfuric acid. Most of it goes into fertilizers, but a share is used in food, detergents and pharmaceuticals, where purity requirements are far stricter. Several research groups are now working on removing impurities from the crude acid along three different lines: new extractants, closed-loop processes that recover metals, and nanofiltration membranes.SEE MORE
