NETS News

photograph of columns used to separate critical materials

May 20, 2025: Research Highlight

Enabling Urban Mining of Critical Minerals from Domestic Electronic Waste

The NETS team has developed an energy- and chemical-efficient method of separating valuable critical minerals from dissolved solutions of rare earth element magnets

 

Photograph of a manganese-containing nodule

May 8, 2025: Research Highlight

Selectively Recovering Manganese from Surface Accessible Nodules

Surface manganese mining from nodules in South Dakota is now possible with a new scalable selective precipitation process.

 

Illustration of a flow-based separations system

December 5, 2024: Research Highlight

A Streamlined Process to Extract Magnesium from Seawater

Precipitation with sodium hydroxide in a flow-gel device enables the rapid extraction of magnesium from seawater in a new scalable process.

 

e-scrap particles

September 26, 2024: News Coverage

Mining the e-scrap stream 

PNNL’s process of recovering some critical metals from e-scrap using a mixed-salt water-based solution is noted as a big step in R&D for e-scrap recycling.

 

PNNL materials scientist Qingpu Wang superimposed on a pile of electronic waste

April 23, 2024: News Release

Critical Minerals Recovery from Electronic Waste

A nontoxic separation process recovers critical minerals, such as manganese, magnesium, dysprosium, and neodymium, from electronic scrap waste.

 

Illustration showing a column-based separations approach overlaid on a periodic table

January 24, 2024: Article

Separating Critical Materials from Dissolved Batteries

A simple gel-based system separates metals ions from a model solution of dissolved battery electrodes without the need for specialty chemicals, membranes, or toxic solvents.